“We’re busy. And the port is ac­tive, all things considered,” said Will Stanfield, president of Cape Fear Bonded Warehouse, a third-party logistics service warehouse firm in Wilmington.
 
While many industries such as leisure and hospitality are facing re­strictions during the crisis, resulting in furloughs and layoffs, businesses deemed essential like those in the logistics, warehouse and distribution industries need extra help to meet increasing demands.
 
Hiring in the essential markets, however, may not be able to make up for more than a half-million people who have filed unemployment claims in just North Carolina alone.
 
For Cape Fear Bond Warehouse, the pandemic has resulted in a new export product now handled by the firm, a liquid chemical that goes into the production of hand sanitizer, Stanfield said.
 
“This product is made domestical­ly by a private company. It’s a recent account picked up by an existing customer of ours. But I think it will be continued with what’s going on with this pandemic,” he said, adding that the company is seeing between 35 to 40 additional container loads of the product weekly for export to Europe.
 
The family-owned firm, which has been around since 1976, han­dles various kinds of imports and exports, mainly on the container side. Its business and warehouse sit on 14 acres at 810 Sunnyvale Drive in Wilmington.
 
The firm, which has about 20 em­ployees, has made a few additional hires recently to handle the increase in export activity.
 
Stanfield’s sector isn’t the only that’s been hiring. Area grocers, pharmacies and other essential businesses are also adding employees because of the burgeoning demands for different types of products and services in the time of the COVID-19 crisis.
 
Some retailers are still hiring such as Lowe’s, the Mooresville-based hardware chain, which is adding 30,000 people in U.S. stores.
 
Grocers, including Publix and Harris Teeter, as well as Instacart, a grocery delivery and pick-up service, have seen an increase in consumer demand since the pandemic and are hiring as a result.
 
For example, Instacart announced in late March it was bringing on 300,000 new full-service shoppers over the next three months in the U.S. and Canada. And Matthews- based Harris Teeter also announced that it would hire more than 5,000 to fill retail and distribution center positions in March.
 
But some big firms have faced losses, resulting in furloughs and layoffs.
 
General Electric corporate announced in March a 10% reduction to GE Aviation’s U.S. workforce, an effect of the crisis on the aviation industry.
 
Unemployment claims across the nation have skyrocketed.


 
In North Carolina, between March 15 and April 14, there were 598,798 unemployment claims with 518,939 of them COVID-19 related, according to the N.C. Department of Commerce.
 
To make up for wage losses across the country, the federal government in the historic $2.2 trillion stimulus package, known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, included increasing unemployment benefit payments and extending the benefit period.
 
Also, in that act is the Paycheck Protection Program, an SBA loan intended to help keep the workforce employed during the crisis. And more federal relief could be on the way.
 
Gov. Roy Cooper issued an order that required bars and restaurants to close off their dining rooms to the public (leaving still curbside pick-up and delivery), and later added a stay-at- home order that further limited business.
 
Those particular sectors, and nonessential businesses, were impacted by additional restrictions in New Hanover County.
 
The owner of Front Street Brewery at 9 N. Front St. decided to close the establishment’s doors soon after Cooper restricted restaurants, and had to lay off his more than 80-employee workforce.
 
The move came after first creating social distancing measures inside the downtown Wilmington restaurant. Front Street Brewery decided to discontinue options for pick-up or delivery for the safety of its employees and because the business volume needed didn’t materialize, said Tom Harris, who has owned the restaurant since 2006.
 
Other such businesses across the Cape Fear region have had to make similar calls, including the retail and hospitality sector, because of restrictions aimed at keeping coronavirus patients from overwhelming the area’s health care facilities and workers.
 
“Hospitality and retail have been impacted. But on the other hand, there are things that are on the upside of this,” said Mike Youngblood, president and CEO of Hire Scene, a staffing solutions company.
 
Hire Scene has been in business in Wilmington since 1986.
 
Logistics companies, construction, health care and other sectors have open job listings with the firm, Youngblood said.
 
“Certain positions require training and certification, and others do not. So it’s a good time for a job seeker to be flexible,” Youngblood said, adding that during this time, job hunters should try to get out of their comfort zone and be willing to consider different job options.
 
Hire Scene has a brick-and-mortar facility at 2517 Delaney Ave., as well as an online solution and app that connects employers with job seekers.
 
The company is expecting more business in the coming weeks.
 
“Our volume has been on an increase from even preCOVID-19 restrictions. Some of that has been the result of projects we already had in place, and some of it is a reaction to the demand as a result of COVID-19,” Youngblood said. “We’re putting people literally to work every day and now at an accelerating rate. It’s going to be interesting for us as we look forward to one day when the restrictions are eased and we can go back to some form of normality. We are expecting a very sharp upturn.”
 
But the expansion of some opportunities locally won’t make up for a significant loss in the core sectors of the Wilmington-area economy, said Adam Jones, a regional economist with the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
 
In 2018, the last full year of data, for example, grocers and wholesalers in Wilmington employed about 3,000 people, while the leisure and hospitality sectors, a big business for the area, employed about 18,000 people, Jones said.
 
“Just take a quick guess: Assume 50% unemployment in the leisure and hospitality sector and grocers double in employment – both are likely optimistic assumptions – that means expansions of grocers would only employ a little over a third of the jobs lost in leisure and hospitality,” Jones said.
 
“The expansion of opportunities in a few sectors,” he said, “won’t make a very large dent in the number of folks that have lost their jobs.”