This Christmas, many people will reach for their present under the tree and excitedly unwrap it only to reveal a print out of a product saying it hasn’t yet arrived. With the combination of labor shortages and delays, people should be prepared for their Christmas presents they ordered back in November to arrive as late as March or April.

The outbreak of COVID-19 led to the closure of businesses across the globe, which caused furloughing and letting go of large numbers of employees. These closures and lack of employers led to the significant lessening of production. Once select companies were able to come back to some sort of normalcy, they needed more people and materials once again, which proved to be difficult.

Finding the people became a major issue, as US unemployment paid more than minimum wage jobs, and people didn’t want to go back to work when they could make the same amount of money (or more) by remaining unemployed. With every company being short-handed, it became difficult to produce or receive both the products and supplies that companies relied on from each other, and every aspect of production was delayed.

It seems like every store has a sign advertising for new hires, or some type of notice saying the store is short handed. Not only is this the case in physical stores, but the issue is present in factories that produce for those stores, and also within shipment to and from manufacturers.

Another issue delaying production comes from China. They began having scheduled sectioned factory shutdowns because the country exceeded their limit of energy use for the year. Lately China has been using up much more energy each year. This year the country’s total power generation from January-August was 10.1% greater than the same amount of time in 2020, and the rates will likely continue to rise. While shutting down factories is a large step in the right direction for sustaining the earth’s resources and reducing pollution, it comes at a cost. With a high percentage of American products being manufactured in China, this has caused a major issue within America, and various other countries. Now the factories simply don’t have the time or resources to produce the highly demanded products.

With all of the delays combined, holiday shopping will require more preparation this year. It is likely that in-person stores will run low on stock, and online orders will take much longer than normal. Because of these delays consumers should be ready to receive their packages much later than usual.

Contact Kelsi Seltenreich at [email protected]