There’s a wild card in the push to return to pre-pandemic life: Many workers don’t want to go back to the jobs they once had.

Layoffs and lockdowns, combined with enhanced unemployment benefits and stimulus checks, gave many Americans the time and the financial cushion to rethink their careers. Their former employers are hiring again — and some, like Uber and McDonald’s, are offering higher pay — but workers remain hesitant.

In March, U.S. job openings rose 8% to a record 8.1 million, but overall hiring rose less than 4%, according to government data.

Nate Mullins quit his job as a bartender last November after clashing with managers over mask rules and worrying that he would spread the coronavirus to his immune-compromised sister.

Mullins’ unemployment checks don’t match what he was making at his Oak Harbor, Washington bar, but they’re enough to get by while he looks for jobs that would provide health care and retirement benefits.

“This opportunity to take a step back and really think about what you’re doing really changed my mind,” said Mullins, 36. “(It) made me think long-term for the first time.”

Workers like Mullins are one reason U.S. hiring slowed in April. Employers and business groups argue that the $300-per-week federal unemployment supplement gives recipients less incentive to look for work. Several states have begun requiring those receiving the benefits to show they are actively searching for work, and a few will stop providing the supplement.

But Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist who researches low- and middle-income workers with the Economic Policy Institute, said health concerns and child care responsibilities seem to be the main reasons holding workers back.

In April, she said, at least 25% of U.S. schools weren’t offering in-person learning, forcing many parents to stay home. And health concerns could gain new urgency for some workers now that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said fully vaccinated people can stop wearing masks in most settings.

Shierholz added that unemployment benefits are designed to give workers the time to find jobs that are better suited to their abilities.

“We want people well-matched to their skills and experience,” she said. “That’s what helps the economy run better.”

Higher pay for workers can push up inflation, which jumped in April as the economy struggled with widespread shortages of raw materials and parts amid a faster-than-expected reopening. If companies are forced to raise prices to cover the cost of higher wages, that could slow the recovery and reduce Americans’ purchasing power.

For now, most economists see labor shortages as likely to be temporary. As more Americans are vaccinated, fewer will worry about getting sick at work. Schools should reopen in September, freeing more parents to return to work, and the extra $300 in unemployment aid is also set to expire in early September. Those steps should bring more people into the job market.

Sarah Weitzel gave birth to her second child in February 2020. She was on leave from her job at a Victoria’s Secret store in St. Louis when the pandemic threw her life into chaos.

She got a text telling her she was furloughed. Then her husband lost his restaurant job. In financial straits, they sold their home, moved in with friends, survived on unemployment insurance and fell deeper into debt.

In the fall, Victoria’s Secret offered Weitzel part-time work that would pay $12 an hour, but she declined. She and her husband, who now works long hours at a new restaurant job, can’t afford child care.

“Something just kind of broke, where I thought about how hard I was working for this job that paid about $32,000 a year,” Weitzel said.

Weitzel, 31, got accepted to Rung for Women, a St. Louis program that offers career coaching and training for jobs in high demand, including banking, health care, customer service and technology. In the fall, when her oldest daughter starts preschool, Weitzel hopes to get part-time work in a new career.

Mark Smithivas drove for Uber and Lyft for four years before he abruptly quit last spring out of concern for his health. He has spent the last year taking technology classes in a federal worker training program.

Smithivas, 52, just got his second vaccination, but he doesn’t want to go back to ride-hailing. He worries about carjackings and other crimes targeting drivers in Chicago, where he lives.

“I always viewed this job as temporary, and I really do want to find something that fits my career and background better,” he said.

Some workers say the pandemic helped them prioritize their mental and physical health.

After a lifelong career as a bartender, 57-year-old Ellen Booth was in constant pain from lifting ice buckets and beer kegs. But without a college degree, she felt she had limited options.

When the restaurant she worked for closed last year, she said it gave her “the kick I needed.” Booth, of Coventry, Rhode Island, started a year-long class to learn to be a medical coder. When her unemployment benefits ran out two months ago, she started drawing on her retirement funds. Booth will take an exam in the coming weeks to get certified, after which she will hit the job market.

Shelly Ortiz, 25, used to love her career as a restaurant server. But things changed last June, when her Phoenix restaurant reopened its dining room. She wore two masks and glasses to protect herself, but still felt anxiety in a restaurant full of unmasked diners.

Sexual harassment also got worse, she said. Patrons would ask her to pull down her mask so they could see how cute she was before tipping her.

Ortiz quit in July after she learned that the restaurant didn’t deep-clean the bar after a bartender was potentially exposed. She and her partner, a teacher, curtailed their spending, and Ortiz returned to school full time. This month, she is graduating from Glendale Community College with a degree in film and a certificate in documentary directing.

Ortiz stopped getting unemployment benefits in November, when she did some part-time film work. Money is tight, she said, but she’s never been happier. And she doesn’t think she’ll ever be a restaurant server again.

“I don’t know if I could do it with a smile anymore,” she said. “I don’t think it should be an option for anyone to treat any worker the way that service industry workers are treated in America.”

In a tight labor market, some workers are also finding that if they hold out, they might get a better job than the one they left.

Taryn Henderson spent six years working at Best Buy before she was unexpectedly let go in February.

“They didn’t value the work I put in, the time I put in, because I got laid off,” said Henderson, 24, a college student who lives in Austin, Texas. “It was just really discouraging.”

At first she focused on her schoolwork, living on her unemployment checks and a severance payment that gave her 10 weeks’ worth of pay. But soon she was anxious to work again, and thought a new job that valued her more would make her feel better.

After a few months of searching, she found another job with a music streaming service. She’ll start later this month and will make $10 more per hour than the $17 she made at Best Buy.

“As long as I’m making enough money that I can support myself, the people that I love and I can get to travel every once in a while, I’m good,” said Henderson. “I think this job will afford me the opportunities to do that.”

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LONDON (AP) — A German privacy watchdog banned Facebook on Tuesday from gathering data on users of its WhatsApp chat app, citing an update to its privacy policy that it said breaches stringent European data protection rules.

Hamburg’s data protection commissioner, Johannes Caspar, said he issued an emergency three-month order prohibiting the social network from processing WhatsApp personal data for its own purposes.

“The order is intended to safeguard the rights and freedoms of the many millions of users who approve to the terms of use throughout Germany,” Caspar said in a statement. “The aim is to prevent disadvantages and damage associated with such a black-box procedure.”

Caspar’s office said the updated terms and privacy policy allowing Facebook access to a lot more information on WhatsApp users were too broad and not transparent.

The watchdog opened urgent proceedings last month because of concerns that WhatsApp users were being required to agree to the update by May 15 or else they wouldn’t be able to continue using the service.

WhatsApp denied the update is connected with any expansion of data sharing with Facebook, pointing out it is related only to messages between businesses and customers.

The order “is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose and effect of WhatsApp’s update and therefore has no legitimate basis,” WhatsApp said in a statement, adding that because the Hamburg regulator’s claims are wrong, it wouldn’t affect the update’s rollout.

WhatsApp initially tried to introduce the update at the start of the year but backed off after a wave of confusion and misinformation among users, many of whom flocked to rival chat apps such as Signal and Telegram.

Caspar warned that with 60 million users in Germany, there’s a danger WhatsApp could be used to influence voters in September federal elections through Facebook ads. He said he would refer the case to the European Data Protection Board to get a Europe Union-wide decision.

Facebook’s German headquarters is based in Hamburg, giving Caspar jurisdiction at the national level when it comes to enforcing the EU’s strict General Data Protection Regulation for the company.

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“Before SAS, we had a massive data integration problem.” Judi Nightingale, Population Health Director, Riverside CountyTweet this

“Analytics help organizations harness big data and use it to identify new opportunities. And the starting point for effective analytics is applying new techniques to discover, prepare and govern data,” said Tapan Patel, Senior Marketing Manager for AI and Analytics at SAS. “New SAS Viya data management offerings allow businesses to catalog assets across the cloud and on-premises and prepare data without hassle. These are fundamental elements of a successful analytic journey.”

Most analytics professionals spend too much time on data preparation rather than building models and delivering analytic insights for their organizations. Whether data is simple or complex, organizations need innovative solutions that cut through the chaos, provide flexibility and efficiently transform data to create better analytical assets. Today, SAS is announcing two such innovative solutions.

SAS Studio Analyst
As analytics and AI become more embedded in day-to-day operations, organizations need data in the right place, in the right condition and at the right time.

Now available in SAS Viya, SAS Studio Analyst empowers data scientists and data analysts with a self-service environment to expedite delivery of trusted data for analytics. SAS Studio Analyst allows users to visually represent, prebuilt or custom, data quality and data preparation steps as part of the flow, which can be easily reused and managed. This helps to jump-start analytics initiatives and efficiently orchestrate data needed for it.

SAS Information Governance
In a world with endless data sources, many organizations struggle to grasp all data that is available, identify the contents of a data set, and evaluate data for analytics fitness. And as the amount of data increases from more and more sources, these issues are compounded, affecting the value of analytical outputs.

SAS Information Governance, also now available in SAS Viya, provides an intuitive data catalog and metadata search facility for analyst, business and IT users to ingest, discover and manage data resources, while simultaneously governing and protecting data. With the solution, data professionals can spend less time searching and organizing data, and more time on actual analysis.

Better data management and governance improves people’s health
Riverside County in Southern California relies on data integration and analytics from SAS to improve the health and well-being of more than 2.5 million residents. The county faced the challenge of pulling together innumerable amounts of data from multiple sources. The goal is to better serve the needs of its diverse and large population through the county’s health system, which includes a large medical center, an inpatient psychiatric facility and several health care clinics.

To ensure the most vulnerable populations receive coordinated medical, behavioral health and socioeconomic services, Riverside County worked with SAS to design a solution that combines data preparation, advanced analytics and data visualization capabilities. The solution, powered by SAS Viya, enables the county to integrate health and non-health data from its public hospital, county jail, and behavioral health, social services and homelessness systems.

By connecting these databases, Riverside County can now see how individuals interact with different services across its health system and map care pathways to health outcomes. This is enhanced by entity resolution, a feature of the technology that enables the county to identify unique entities, even if a person’s name, address or other personal identifiers don’t match up across different databases.

“Before SAS, we had a massive data integration problem,” said Judi Nightingale, Director of Population Health at Riverside County. “If we can get an integrated look at every client and reduce our siloed efforts, we can get everyone in the county to their health and wellness goals more quickly.”

Read the full story of how Riverside County tapped SAS Viya to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable Californians at sas.com/en_us/customers/riverside-county.html.

The latest release of SAS Viya includes the new data management offerings – SAS Studio Analyst and SAS Information Governance – and is designed to be delivered and updated continuously. The cloud-native software enables customers to efficiently democratize analytics throughout their organizations, while seamlessly managing analytic workloads and embedding analytics into variety of operational applications for making confident decisions.

About SAS 
SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative software and services, SAS empowers and inspires customers around the world to transform data into intelligence. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW^®.

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright © 2021 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.

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