West Virginia ranks third in the country as a state where employers are struggling in hiring.

The data comes from a WalletHub report looking at the job openings rate for both the previous month and the past 12 months.

“Lots of businesses are struggling to hire enough workers, which has sometimes led to delays in services and reduced business hours,” the report stated. “In fact, the labor force participation rate is still below pre-pandemic levels, and is at one of the lowest points in decades.”

West Virginia’s job openings rate was 7.5% over the past month and 8.01%, ranked second overall, over the past year.

“Increasingly, employees are expecting more from their work lives in terms of work-life balance, flexibility, and personal well-being – and are less willing to be overworked,” said Maura Mills, an associate professor in the Department of Management at the University of Alabama. “This, however, has not meshed well with employers’ simultaneously increasing expectations for employee workloads and demands. The natural result of these increasingly mismatched expectations is higher turnover rates.”

West Virginia’s unemployment rate is now 3.4%, down from 3.7% in February, 3.9% in January and 4.1% in December.

“Employers must focus on the employee experience at work,” said Claretha Hughes, a Professor of Human Resource and Workforce Development at the University of Arkansas. Employees want to feel valued by their employers for all of their contributions. Without recognition, rewards, incentives, and pay that match their individual value to the organization, employees will continue to leave.