I have been searching for a better way to communicate with the Section Staff, Officers, and Board of Directors, and I hope this digital resource is the solution I have been looking for! The home page will deliver the most up to date information, while you can also use the "Past Report Library" to view information from the past several years. I think this will accomplish three important goals:

1. Information will be up to the minute. If I make an important change to the report, it will be available to everyone immediately. This should eliminate lags in time between the time I write reports and the time you access them

2. The "past report library" will provide current Section Staff, Officers, and Board Members easy access to past reports for reference

3. New staff members, Officers, & Board Members can use the entire library to catch up on PGA Career Services initiatives and news.

As I was loading the past reports to the library, I realized that the frequency of communication the past year has not been as good as I would like it to be. I apologize for that. I should be better and am determined to increase my communication moving forward. I hope this digital tool will allow me to do so in a much easier manner.

It has been a really good spring / summer for me, as I have been able to get back on the road and be with the members. My goal/plan is to continue to do so, but I just received an email from PGAHQ banning all "non-essential" travel for the time being. I'm not sure what that means, but it may impact my travel schedule for the foreseeable future.

As a department, our biggest priorities at the moment are:

1. Collecting compensation information via the PGA.org Compensation Profile (data below)

2. Solution planning for the labor shortage impacting the golf industry (and all industries)

I want to start with the Compensation Profile data, as this is absolutely the #1 tool I use to help impact PGA Member Compensation. It is imperative that this data is provided and updated by PGA Members. I request your help in continuing to spread the message about the importance of the PGA Compensation Profile. As you will see below, 575 Carolinas PGA Members and Associates have completed their profiles. For historical perspective, almost 989 completed the survey in 2019 (the last time we did this exercise), and 988 completed in 2018. With that said, we still need over 400 more CPGA Members and Associates to complete their profile by the end of the month in order to reach our goal (which is essentially our historical average).

As for the labor shortage...I wish I had a solution, as I could sell it to every industry and retire by the end of the year. I am actually planning on writing a much longer article on the subject in the next week or two, but I'll give you the short version in my report. If you go to the "Past Report Library" and read my report from June, 2021, you will see that I have been writing about the impending labor shortage for over three years. The trends have been clear to see for a while now, but COVID was the inflection point that has turned it into a crisis.

The truth is we have built an industry on the premise that cheap labor would always be abundant (and our industry is not alone on this premise). However, the era of cheap labor is officially over, and the confluence of long term demographic trends (shrinking working age population due to aging population and lower birth rates for decades) coupled with the rise of the gig economy (see charts and links below) has left us with fewer available workers. Many people claim that enhanced unemployment payments are to blame, but I disagree, as those payments are a small blip in a long term trend. If those workers ever return to the workforce, they will no longer be cheap labor.

So where does this leave us as an industry? As the PGA Career Services Department? Well, we are not going to give up. In fact, our department is hiring four additional staff members whose main role will be to provide outreach to attract people to our industry. It is a start, although we need to address industry issues such as compensation, work/life balance, & advancement opportunities.

As an industry, my advice is to be proactive in three ways:

1. Retain the staff you have - They are like gold right now...pay them well and treat them well.

2. Continue to actively recruit new talent - Be aggressive in your approach to adding talent to your team.

3. Begin to reinvent your operation - As I said earlier, the era of cheap and abundant labor is over. Begin to imagine how to operate your business with less staff...the time may come much sooner than you think. Leveraging new technologies will certainly make facilities more efficient with their labor, but I don't think that will be enough...I truly believe the facilities will need to identify "essential services" and "nice to have" services and adjust their business accordingly. As an example, check out this article about fast food restaurant Wendy's, who will be opening 700 new locations without dining rooms. It is scary stuff to think about, but the best time to start planning is before the problem occurs.

As always, thank you for your support of me and PGA Career Services. Please let me know if you have any questions, and give me a call if you want to chat.

Mike Mueller

All Active Positions

PGA Compensation Profile - Carolinas Section Participation

Job Preferences - Carolinas Section Participation

Tab 1 - Newly elected PGA Members

Tab 2 - Names and emails of people who have applied to the Pre-Qualifier program. PQ applicants purchase and review the five qualifying level courses: Introduction to the PGM and the Golf Profession, PGA History, PGA Constitution, Rules of Golf and Career Enhancement to be eligible to register for the qualifying test through our third party test company virtually.

Please note that PGA HQ does not collect employment information at the time of PQ registration.