As artists prepare to emerge from pandemic cocoons and start touring again, they’re facing a crisis: a shortage of roadies.
With a year of live events now missing, stage hands, venue employees, and lighting and sound technicians have had to move on and find other work.
“But live events are coming back this year. What’s the problem?”
With jobs that promise stability or perks like insurance or retirement, event organizers are nervous that those roadies are gone for good.
Read more about it here.
I’ve had conversations with countless roadies and technicians that have just had to move on and find a new career over the last 16 months. While you see it also happening in other service industry fields, what happened in the events industry was very unique. The nature of this pandemic, requiring the globe to stop gathering, affected the events industry to its core. What do you do for work when concerts, conferences, movies, and events all stop? In an industry that is always prepared, we weren’t ready for this. Much of the [production] industry’s workforce are contractors, and those individuals have found other outlets of income like Amazon, Uber/Lyft and/or Doordash. There is a fear that these absences will be most felt later this year, when events will likely be back in full force.”
-Daniel White, Owner