US poultry industry challenged by labor issues

The U.S. poultry industry currently is facing a shortage of qualified workers, with turnover rates as high as they have been in a decade, Mike Donohue, vice president of Agri Stats, said while speaking at the Poultry Market Intelligence Forum at the 2019 International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE) in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Mike Donohue, vice president of Agri Stats, addressed poultry industry labor shortages at the 2019 International Production & Processing Expo. (Roy Graber)
Mike Donohue, vice president of Agri Stats, addressed poultry industry labor shortages at the 2019 International Production & Processing Expo. (Roy Graber)

The U.S. poultry industry currently is facing a shortage of qualified workers, with turnover rates as high as they have been in a decade, Mike Donohue, vice president of Agri Stats, said while speaking at the Poultry Market Intelligence Forum at the 2019 International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE) in Atlanta, Georgia.

Donohue, speaking on February 13, pointed out that in many parts of the country, the unemployment rate is between 2 and 3.5 percent, which is both good and bad.

“Hallelujah! It’s a wonderful thing. Americans are working. There’s plenty of jobs for our kids,” said Donohue. “In many ways this is a good thing, but the difficulty is finding labor.”

And even when companies hire workers to fill open positions, that doesn’t mean those positions will be occupied long. Donohue showed a slide that revealed that the weekly turnover rates are increasing. For first processing positions the weekly turnover rate is around 1.6 percent, up from the previous year, and for further processing positions, the turnover rate is closing in on 2 percent, which is the highest it has been in a decade.

However, Donohue said worker shortages and high turnover rates are not unique to the poultry sector.

Donohue said: “You talk to your friends working in other industries, and they’ll echo the same sentiments that we have: ‘How do I find labor, and how do I find good, quality labor?”

Wage trends

Labor shortages are coming in spite of meaningful increases in average wages for poultry industry workers.

Donohue said at the present time, the broiler industry’s average wage rate without benefits is closing in on $16 per hour. That compares to an average of around $7.50 in the mid- to late 1990s.

He added that the costs of fringe benefits for employees has also gone up since that time.

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