Royal Farms Offers $500 Signing Bonus As Labor Shortage Intensifies 

Baltimore-based Royal Farms, a privately owned chain of more than 200 convenience stores throughout Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia, is ramping up part-time and full-time employment by offering signing bonuses to new employees. 

“A $500 sign-on bonus at select locations is being offered to new employees. A $300 referral bonus for any active employee is also being offered internally. If an employee is fully vaccinated, they will also receive a $50 COVID-19 Wellness bonus,” a recent Royal Farms press release read. 

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The purpose of signing a bonus appears to entice low-level applicants to work for the convenience store. Think of it as an extra incentive for the prospect to accept the job. 

On the surface, the press release describes the signing bonus as a way to attract new employees at a time of “growing store count and warmer months approaching.” But as we’ve explained before, people are once again getting paid more money to sit on their couch via Biden stimulus checks than work, thus creating a labor shortage that destroys labor market recovery. 

A similar scheme was seen at a McDonald’s in Tampa, Florida, that offered $50 for people to show up for a job interview. 

The latest comments from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City provide a chilling insight this month into the labor shortage developing:

“Stimulus and increased unemployment money are wrecking the labor pool. Lower-level employees are quitting to make just as much not working.”

So, lower-level employees are making more money collecting stimulus checks and other handouts under the Biden administration. This was very similar when former President Trump dished out helicopter money during the early days of the pandemic. 

Even JPMorgan is worried about massive labor shortages in a new report to clients.  

In a letter sent to the White House last week, WSJ explains Democrats on Capitol Hill are pushing for the Biden administration to make the jobless benefits permanent, the onset to universal basic income. 

… and if employers want to hire low-skilled workers who get paid more by the government to sit on the couch to play Xbox, trade crypto, or try to flip penny stocks, they better sweeten the pot for these workers, which is becoming the case in the form of signing bonuses.