In our Spotlight on Business Report tonight, the unofficial start to summer is less than one week away.

But businesses up and down New Jersey have been prepping for months.

Some are struggling with the labor shortage especially as new tourism numbers show visitors are expected to come back at pre-pandemic levels.

As Ted Goldberg reports, it's getting down to the wire for employers still searching for the help they'll need to keep up.

Seaside Heights won't stay this quiet for long with Memorial Day less than a week away.

Employers are filling up job openings with varying degrees of success.

Unfortunately we are a little behind we thought this year would be much easier than previous years after covid from what I gathered this morning there's a backup of applications.

In other words we've got some people waiting in the wings.

Seaside mayor Anthony Vaz says the borough is doing fine in this labor shortage thanks to a boost in pay and an optimistic outlook for the summer.

In my opinion we are back to normal we saw the influx of people the last year and we're seeing it early on when it was nice weather for the Easter holiday.

As beach life and boardwalk life get closer to normal employers are finding new and creative ways to bring in new workers.

Some folks are raising wages and having success with that others are changing the hours of worker shifts.

We try to do the flexibility as much as we can so if people just want to do the daytime hours from 12 p.m and we open until maybe five we can try to do that and if people have another job during the day and want to do the overnight hours or something or the later hours we could try to do that.

Shore tourism last year was close to pre-pandemic levels so businesses and municipalities might have to hire more help to keep up with demand.

Stockton Professor Michael Busler is cautiously optimistic for this year.

People will have money to spend because they were cooped up for so long they really want to come out and spend it they want to feel free they want to rip that mask off and most have done that and they want to go out on the beach and and enjoy themselves.

Another factor is cheaper gasoline which could drive even more tourists to New Jersey's beach towns.

A year ago at this time we're looking at gasoline $4.50, $4.75 at one point up the five dollars so now it's down in the $3.30 $3.40 um a gallon.

So that will seem reasonable uh to people and as such I don't think higher gasoline prices are going to hurt the industry.

Not every municipality can afford to go over minimum wage like Seaside Heights and Busler says businesses that pay a premium for employees have to make up the difference somewhere.

As your labor costs go up all of your costs go up you have to maintain profitability Jersey Shore uh products are typically a little higher priced you know because they have to make a year's worth of profit in five or six months.

Mayor Vaz says there's one local job in particular that has a ton of turnover and could use a few extra applications if someone wants to work on the boardwalk.

Beach attendance they have a rough job their job is to maintain assembling of people making sure they have the right passes to get on the beach that they're not bringing in materials that are forbidden to be on the beach like alcohol and so forth that's a rough and plus it's hot.

According to the New Jersey Division of travel and tourism more than 114 million people visited the state last year an 18 million person bump from 2021.

We'll see if this summer contributes to even more people coming down the shore or going elsewhere in the Garden State.

In Seaside Heights I'm Ted Goldberg NJ Spotlight News.

Support for the Business Report provided by New Jersey American Water we keep life flowing online at newjerseyamwater.com.

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