WASHINGTON - At the worst of the pandemic labor crunch, Mississippi-based convenience store chain Sprint Mart struggled to staff its shops across the South. Workers had drifted to the higher wages Amazon.com Inc offered at its fulfillment centers or opted for flexible economy jobs. It took two years, sequential wage hikes of 20%-tto-30% and a pick-your-own-schedule software, but Sprint Mart HR chief Chris McKinney said the firm has rounded the corner. Workers are back up to a stable 1,400 and applications are in the pipeline. "We started gaining traction 6-to-9 months back, returning to where we felt we need to be," after staffing dipped to 1,100, he said. "We ... are in a mode right now that we aren't chasing a never-ending increase in hourly wages." In the Federal Reserve's (FR) quest to tame inflation (by raising interest rates) and find a stopping point for interest rate hikes, few dynamics will be as important as what Sprint Mart's drive accomplished to coax workers back to front-line service jobs. Fedal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has singled out hiring and wage trends in the service sector as central to its outlook for inflation and monetary policy. Powell was to deliver his semiannual report to Congress on monetary policy and the economy to the Senate Banking Committee on March 7 and the House Financial Services Committee on March 9. (Reuters 03/06/23) After playing wage catch-up, U.S. firms may have found their footing | Reuters
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