Chris Tilly, professor and chair of Urban Planning, commented in a WalletHub article about U.S. states where employers are struggling most to hire workers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In general, Tilly said, employers are having difficulty hiring and keeping workers because the unemployment rate has been so low in recent months — about 3.5% — that workers can be choosy and can demand higher wages. Employers “have been raising wages in response to their difficulty hiring, but they still have not come to terms with how much they will have to raise pay to fill open jobs,” Tilly said. He also noted that when unemployment levels were higher, employers could be more selective in the skills they wanted and could be pickier. “The reality is that workers are capable of learning, and businesses are going to have to do more training than they are accustomed to,” he said.