Restaurant manager Maurice Cotton cannot keep enough employees behind the counter.
"We continue to struggle. I always compare it to a chess game," Cotton says. "You are trying to put the right pieces in the right place except someone keeps yanking your pieces away."
Employers are caught in the middle. They know they have to offer more cash, but sometimes that does not do the trick.
"We may hire someone today and then two or three days later, they may have actually found something that may be a little more along what they want," Cotton says.
N.C. State economist Mike Walden says the consumers pay the ultimate price.
"The consumer pays the ultimate price if they cannot get service as fast as they want," Walden says. "They may have to pay higher prices because businesses have to pay higher wages to attract people."
Walden also says that the strong economy across the country has slowed the migration of people to North Carolina.
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