Let’s talk a little bit about this employees’ job market. I heard this sentiment a few times at the recent 2021 Groundwater Week event in Nashville. Here at The Driller, we’ve talked about it in videos, on podcasts and in our pages. Beyond the water supply industry, look at geothermal, geotechnical or just about any other area of drilling and you hear the same refrain.
Before I go on, let me level set for folks. What does it mean when we call it an “employees’ market”? Imagine a teeter-totter, with available jobs on one side and employees ready to fill them on the other. Too much on one side pulls it down, elevating the other side. In this case, we have plenty of available jobs. The weight on that side of the teeter-totter elevates the employee side, giving job candidates a lot of power. They use that power to do things like ask for raises, push for better work conditions and, yes, look for work elsewhere. Conversely, an “employers’ market,” where available employees outweigh available jobs, gives companies more power to dictate the terms of work.