Fast-Food Employees

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Of course, by this point, you have probably heard about fast-food restaurants facing a severe labor shortage. Some claim that it's because people do not want to work when they can earn more on special pandemic unemployment. Others say it has to do with the work conditions of the fast-food world: small wages, mean customers, long hours, and the like. Of course, as always, the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle. However, we are starting to understand that working conditions might play a larger role in the equation than initially thought.

So, fast-food experts and industry analysts teamed up with multinational investment bank UBS to see who treats their employees the worst. The team took into account wages, benefits, time off, turnover rate, and Glassdoor employee reviews for all of the nation's major restaurant chains. And they didn't just look at the most recent data - the team went back all the way to 2011. So, who are the biggest offenders? Well, Dunkin' Coffee, Sonic, and Chipotle have the least satisfied workers in the fast-food business!

And that's not all they found out...

Changes In The Restaurant Business

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While UBS and the team determined the worst fast-food companies, they also took a look at fast-casual, pizza, coffee, and casual dining places as well. While it probably comes as no surprise, full-service employees had higher satisfaction scores than fast-food workers - tips will do that!

However, the team did announce one very surprising reveal: believe it or not, fast-food worker satisfaction is actually higher than it was pre-pandemic. That's right! However, as the Washington Post, pointed out, this could be the result of many fast-food workers quitting over the past few months. In April, 5.6% of restaurant workers left their jobs. While it's not an all-time high for the industry, it's very high and nearly double the quit rate of the rest of the U.S. economy. The high quit rate is an "indication that restaurant sector employees are leaving their jobs to pursue higher wage rate opportunities – in both other sectors and other restaurant concepts," Gordon Haskett's analysts said in a separate report.

To get a firsthand account of what's going on, Business Insider talked to a Starbucks worker who recently quit her job. While she had worked there for two years, she only recently had the opportunity to find another job. However, she quickly found a new job, and she's not looking back. "It took me a literal day to find a better job," she said.