AMES, Iowa — Unlike the indoor basketball court, foosball tables or fireside lounge at Workiva’s sprawling campus here, the oversize green prize wheel centered among a hive of work stations is not meant for break times.þþOnly employees who refer new hires get a chance to spin it and win up to $2,500.þþ“Thirty percent of our recruiting comes from that wheel,” said Matthew M. Rizai, chief executive of Workiva, a cloud-based software firm. The hunt for workers is unrelenting, he said. “We always have openings.”þþWorkiva is not the only one. “We’ve run out of people for jobs,” said Christopher E. Nelson, chief executive of Kemin Industries, a global agricultural and biotechnology company. At the Des Moines headquarters, where a processing plant can scent the winter air with rosemary or spearmint, there are dozens of positions to fill. “Everything from Ph.D.-level scientists down to factory workers,” Mr. Nelson said.þþThe lament is heard again and again from employers across the state, as the presidential caucuses on Monday are shining an intense national spotlight on Iowa. Once the parade moves on, though, the focus will return to the pressing workaday demands of hiring employees, satisfying customers and getting goods out the door.þþAt 3.4 percent, Iowa’s unemployment rate is among the lowest in the country. With major metropolitan areas — crowded with hard-hat construction sites — painting an alluring picture of steady economic progress, business leaders here retain a sunny optimism that is rarely heard from the presidential candidates.þþBut now that Iowa has achieved a tightening labor market that is the envy of most other states, many companies are confronted with a different set of challenges pushing them to rethink everything from recruiting to economic development.þþThese include the fraught questions surrounding immigration. Iowa is home to United States Representative Steve King, the Republican anti-immigrant firebrand, and the kind of anxieties that he champions pop up in political advertisements in a state where roughly nine of every 10 residents are white.
Source: NY Times
