Senior Living Operators Worry Losing ‘invaluable’ Workers As Trump Admin Continues Deportations

The Trump administration has deported tens of thousands of migrants. Senior living operators, who already employ many immigrant workers, are worried about the impact on their staffing looking ahead.

Alexandria, Virginia-based Goodwin Living is an operator that has lost workers over the past several months due to changes in the visa process, particularly workers from Haiti.

“I don’t think we’ve seen even a little bit of the impact of the changes … but I fear we are about to because of the sizing of the number of people who are going to be left behind,” CEO Rob Liebreich told Senior Housing News. “We’re saying goodbye or trying to push out a really strong, solid workforce of caring individuals who have been invaluable to our field.”

Staffing challenges are not a new problem for the senior living sector, but recent changes from the administration, such as a full suspension of travel from Haiti and Cuba, are exacerbating already strained workforces. A 2023 study from Argentum indicates there is a predicted shortfall of nearly 3 million job postings by 2030 in order to keep up with the demand of the incoming baby boomers.

Maggie Elehwany, senior vice president of public affairs at Argentum, said workers who emigrated from other countries are a “significant portion” of the senior living workforce and that share has only increased over the years. In the meantime, Elehwany said the Washington, D.C.-based organization is working with representatives to try and restrict the damage while coming up with a dedicated visa program specifically for the long-term care industry.

Difficulties with vacancies

Senior living operators have found it more difficult to find staff to fill vacant positions over the past few years. While there is no single factor that attributes to this, the latest round of immigration bans aren’t helping make it any easier.

Bobby Petras, co-founder and CEO of Priority Life Care, said the Fort Wayne, Indiana-based company employs multiple immigrant workers in states such as Florida. Petras said it used to take six months to hire an immigrant worker with an agency partner. Now, it takes an average of two years.

The mass deportations of the Trump administration aren’t the root cause of the operator’s issues, but they don’t help, he said.

“We need workers now,” Petras told SHN. “We as an industry need to do better about recruiting and retaining talent.”

Petras added it has only become harder to recruit and fill positions, particularly in smaller, rural communities. That also extends to larger markets: Philadelphia is also one of its most difficult areas to recruit in, he said.

Changes in regulations and temporary protected status are slowing the processes for new immigrants. According to Liebreich, one-fifth of 350,000 Haitians with temporary protected status, who were allowed to work in the country while not on the path to citizenship, are working in the healthcare and senior living industries.

The staff who will be the most impacted by these changes will be “the worker that actually cares about serving older adults,” Liebreich said, citing foreign-born workers are at a wide variety of levels across Goodwin Living, including caregiving, dining, maintenance, finance and IT. 

Operators such as Houston-based The Aspenwood Company, are more focused to keep up with changes in the paperwork assuring staff are eligible to be working within the country. Aspenwood partners with Procare, a human resources company focused on senior living, to help cover its human resources requirements, and the two companies have dedicated more resources to keep up with the changes that have become more strict, with less time to issue a correction on a form with higher fines if found in violation.

“When you put dollars out there, it’s eye-opening,” Kimberly Varley, senior vice president of human resources at Aspenwood, said.

Finding workers in the U.S.

For now, operators are shifting away from relying on new immigrant workers hires and are strengthening their domestic hiring pipelines.

Aspenwood added a second recruiter to its staff, leading to savings by avoiding the use of outside contracted recruiters. The operator has also taken a more proactive approach, according to Varley, by building on partnerships with trade schools, universities and school systems. The idea is to get into classrooms and make the industry more appealing to students, she said.

Others are refining their online presence on recruiting websites such as Indeed to be more appealing to applicants. However, Petras said, word of mouth is still having the most success.

“Someone that already works for us bringing a friend to come work for us, that’s always been the biggest winner for us,” Petras said.

Liebreich said if finding staff becomes more difficult, he’ll have to increase wages in areas where there’s been high levels of immigration previously. That, in turn, could make things more expensive for other operators in the surrounding areas.

“If I can’t find staff, I’m going to increase my wages, and I’m going to recruit people from further away in markets where maybe people feel like they don’t have any impact,” Liebreich said. “I think everyone in the country is seeing this reality, and everyone in the country is going to feel the impact, because wages have to increase because we have a smaller pool of individuals who are filling in the roles.”

The post Senior Living Operators Worry Losing ‘Invaluable’ Workers As Trump Admin Continues Deportations appeared first on Senior Housing News.