Our hunger for bread and muffins may be insatiable, but grocery stores, restaurants, and pastry shops are increasingly struggling to find one key ingredient: the bakers to make them all.
Massachusetts technology firms and health care companies have been in the trenches of the talent war for years, offering bonuses and padding benefits to lure skilled workers. But with the state’s unemployment rate dropping to its lowest level in 16 years in December, to 2.8 percent, a wider swath of businesses are now experiencing hiring woes, and baking jobs are among the latest to go unfilled.
Bakeries around the region said they are boosting salaries, deploying recruiters to hunt for kitchen staff, offering workers referral bonuses, even going as far as Canada and California to find skilled workers.
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