The worker shortage continues to weigh heavily on some businesses on the Central Coast, as a result, workers tell us their paychecks are suffering.
Lavender Blu Boutique opened 6 months ago with only one sales associate.
"We hired two more people, but yeah it took a while to get there," said Alexis Rhoden, Lavender Blu Boutique Sales Associate.
She said at the time they were experiencing the shortage, taking a long time to find more staff.
"It definitely took us maybe 4 or 5 months to even get someone applying," said Rhoden.
Right now the boutique has enough people to operate through the holiday season but if they lose any employees it could take months to find a replacement- putting a strain on the current employees.
"For instance, if we have to cover it takes away from other people's things and things that I have to get done like such as school," said Rhoden.
"Basically sometimes it's like not putting in the hours so I'm not getting the pay I'm used to getting or someone goes home early," said Miguel Chirez, Bliss Worker.
Michael Chirez says they've been experiencing a worker shortage for the last 2 months. They expect to see an increase in demand during the holiday season.
"For 2 weeks now we've been closing early because of the short staff and we've seen kind of negative reviews about that," said Chirez.
Chirez noted that despite the expected increase in demand, a worker shortage continuing through the holidays will cause them to close early.
Pippa & Ky is experiencing a worker shortage that has caused them to shift their hours. Employees at the store expect the store to be even busier as the holidays approach creating additional stress.
"It will be even more of a struggle at that point because it'll be way busier, there's going to be more people in the stores," said Peyton Pelech, Pippa & Ky Cashier.
Like Lavender's Blue Boutique, Pippa and Ky have also had trouble getting people to apply to work in the store.
"Especially now that school has started and kids are going back to school we've just had less employees than we really ever have, but it's just been a struggle to find them," said Pelech.
On top of the increase in demand and worker shortage, Pippa & Ky expect to lose even more employees during the holidays.
"Most of our employees go to Cal Poly so they're all going to go home for winter break so it's going to be difficult," said Pelech.
