Nearly 80% of Americans said they faced shortages at the grocery store in the last 3 three months, according to a new survey
AP Photo/Matt Rourke
- Over three-quarters of US shoppers say they're seeing shortages at the grocery store.
- SurveyMonkey surveyed 998 respondents on February 17.
- Shortages result from the bogged-down supply chain and continue effects of previous COVID-19 outbreaks.
A 40-year high in inflation and supply shortages across the economy are combining to make grocery shopping more difficult.
More than three-quarters of Americans, 79%, say they've experienced shortages of grocery items they wanted to buy in the last three months, according to a new survey of 998 US adults by SurveyMonkey on February 17. The study was commissioned by Momentive
More than half of respondents said that they've faced shortages of meat or eggs and paper products, like toilet paper and paper towels. Dairy product shortages were noticed by 50% of respondents, while canned good shortages were a bit rarer, experienced by 41% of those surveyed.
Barren grocery shelves are reminiscent of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and experts suspected things would get worse before they get better. "It's much worse than 2020. The variables that are causing this are not new but the newest round of COVID has hit logistics hard," David Marcotte, retail and supply chain expert from Kantar Consulting told Insider in January.
Shortages were caused by continuing impacts of the Omicron variant. Workers fell sick due to the highly transmissible variant which caused slowdowns in production at meat processing plants and dairy producers. This stunted the already short-staffed supply chain after a year of historic levels of workers quitting grocery stores, manufacturing facilities, and other jobs key to getting food to grocery stores.
"We don't have a problem with farms producing enough food. We have problems with not enough labor in the supply chains between the farms and the consumers," president and founder of BrightFarms Paul Ligthfoot told Eater in January.
Dairy producers were "struggling to run with the surge of coronavirus cases, squeezing already constrained labor," Matt Gould, editor of The Dairy Market Analyst, said in a note to clients, reported by Bloomberg. Lower production means higher prices and less availability in stores.
Meat production has been heavily impacted by the labor challenges of the past two years. Meatpacking facilities like Tyson suffered from massive COVID-19 outbreaks in 2020, impacting operations. Animal production facilities are the industry most likely to be impacted by outbreaks and loss of workers because of how many workers are required to take animals from slaughter to grocery shelves, according to a study from Purdue University.
Though the Omicron wave's peak has passed, shoppers continue to report shortages, and experts say the supply chain will remain impacted throughout 2022.
Do you have a story to share about a retail or restaurant chain? Email this reporter at mmeisenzahl@businessinsider.com.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/PWmfEgC
No comments