A growing number of workers at major produce companies, processing plants, and grocery stores are calling out sick. 
These virus-related absences are resulting in product shortages, leaving supermarket shelves far from full. Jesse Newman, agriculture reporter at The Wall Street Journal, joins Cheddar News to discuss.

Cheddar's News Wrap

Supermarkets Struggle to Keep Shelves Stocked

agriculture executives say that supply challenges are bad and to make things even worse, A growing number of workers at major produce companies, processing plants and grocery stores are calling out sick, these virus related absences are resulting in product shortages, leaving supermarket shelves far from full joining me now is Jesse Newman, Agricultural reporter at The Wall Street Journal. And jesse break down for us. What exactly is happening here? Yeah. Hi, thanks for having me. So what we're seeing is that the products on supermarket shelves are spotty again. Um consumers are encountering shortages in grocery stores. And you know, we've seen this now for about going, you know, about two years. Um And but the root causes of it are very different. So at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, you know, we saw this huge disruption in the food supply chain just because producers were having to direct so much of the food from the restaurant industry to grocery stores. As you know, shoppers were panic buying and sort of clearing store shelves. And now we just are, you know, seeing producers and groceries and everyone have to cope with both chronic labor shortages and then also, you know, pandemic driven absences. So, oh, Macron hit, you know, food manufacturers and groceries, just like everybody else. So there's a real um, you know, we're dealing with real labor challenges that are resulting in shortages on supermarket shelves. Now when it comes to the americans feeling this, is there anything that these superstore operators can do, says they're now dealing with labor shortages supply chain issues and other things. Yeah, I mean, you know, this isn't their first go around. So they're, you know, they've they've had some time to try to figure out their procedures. Um, so we talked to a grocery chain in the, in the southeast that was hiring temporary workers. Um, A lot of grocery chains are also offering their workers over time asking people to work longer hours. Um, so it's sort of an all hands on deck situation. Um, and everyone both, you know, again, from the producer level to the grocery level, is just trying to figure out how to get as many, uh, as many bodies in their warehouses and plants and stores to stock up supermarket operators and food makers are noticing a domino effect in operations. Could you explain what that means to us? Yeah, so like I said, it's really a question of labor this time around. Um, you know, we've got nearly five million people out of the out of who are, you know, still out of the economy. And so there's just there's a chronic labor shortage that all of these, everyone along the supply chain is dealing with. Um, and then, you know, starting at the end of last year, we also saw an uptick in covid absenteeism as omicron hit. Um, and that really affected manufacturers again, warehouses, supermarkets. Um, and so you just had people calling out sick in a bigger proportions than we've seen in a while. And so, you know, it isn't a question of food availability there is food is still ample in the US, but we just don't have the people at this time too necessarily move the food from farm to table and get it um you know, get it to the grocery stores where it needs to be, so the food may be there, but if you don't have people at each step of the supply chain, in the warehouses, distribution centers, at stores, truck drivers, um then, you know, you're gonna wind up with the, with the supply outages that we're seeing. Now, I want to turn in business that stock outs cause walkouts, what happens when these customers go to their favorite grocer realized they don't have the item in stock? And the grocer is striking out perhaps three or four times in a row, How is the grocer going to deal with perhaps that customer trying to go somewhere else? You know? Again, I think um customers shoppers have also been dealing with this for a while now, so there's a certain amount of flexibility um that you're seeing people are switching to different to different brands, but there's also a really wide variety of places that people can go for their goods. So you're seeing um you're seeing consumers look online to see if they can, you know, get what they were looking for um or try another store, so it's definitely, you know, not an ideal scenario from a, from a grocery perspective, although I will say because you know, because the challenges are so widespread um it's something that virtually everyone is dealing with what items are lowest in stock and how can consumers protect themselves before they make the trip to the grocery store? So some of the really um some of the things that we saw in the data were that items like sports and energy drinks and refrigerated dough. Um You know some of these products were were very out of stock compared to you know, compared to just like all edible products. We also heard about frozen frozen vegetables, frozen cookie dough. So you know, I think obviously these aren't staples, this isn't bread and butter. A lot of those things um You know, we're still we're still able to find um But I think a lot of it is hit and miss. I mean you you go to the store one moment um and they have it and then the next they don't. And so uh you know, I think it's a question of being sort of primed when you go shopping that you may have to, you may have to make a few trips to find what you're looking for and just really quickly if you can, which states are you noticing getting hit the most by this? Well, you know, there's a few states, there's some states with particularly rural areas um Alaska and West Virginia where the total outages are more than, you know, more than we've seen in other states. So I think, you know, in places that you would expect, uh, it just to be a little more difficult to, to stock stores. That's where you're seeing even bigger outages. Um, but you know, this is again, this is affecting the US overall. All right, Jesse, Newman, agriculture reporter at The Wall Street Journal, thank you so much for that report, Jesse, I appreciate you spending your time with us.