Linchi Kwok, Ph.D.

Everything is getting pricier. Everyone, from consumers to business owners, feels the pain.   How bad is it?     For eight consecutive months, consumer prices   spiked by 5% or more . The   consumer price index rose 7%   in December from a year ago. The last time inflation reached 7.1% was in June 1982. Here is a breakdown (as compared to last December unless specified otherwise):     Food: +6.3%   Gasoline: +49.6%   Energy: +29.3% or -1.1% from November Used car and truck: +37.3% Shelter cost: 4.1% or 0.4% from November   Wage is rising too   The inflation, plus labor shortage and the “Great Resignation,” have also pushed higher wages. Goldman Sacks CEO David Michael Solomon suggested in an interview that   wage inflation   is happening “in every area of the economy.” In December, the average hourly wages showed a 4.7% year-to-year increase, as some financial service firms reported a 14% or even 34% increase in compensation expenses.     Inflation is not the only challenge, however  

In October, U.S. employers posted 11 million job openings . Job openings have exceeded 10 million for five consecutive months already. Meanwhile, there were only 7.4 million unemployed Americans in October, equivalent to 1.5 available jobs for every unemployed person.     The leisure and hospitality sector alone added additional 251,000 openings. Vacant positions in leisure and hospitality have reached 1.8 million. Then, what can hospitality businesses do to deal with the labor shortage issue?       Companies found solutions through automatic services   Hotels, restaurants, and foodservice businesses are redesigning jobs with more automatic service components. Hotels want customers to skip the Front Desk. Guests can use mobile apps to do almost everything for a hotel stay, from making/updating a reservation, checking in, opening the guestroom, making service requests, to checking out.     Restaurants and foodservice businesses went steps further. Some have introduced new store designs