The Rising Costs of Litigation: Part IV, Labor
Even before the pandemic, labor costs were on the rise. Now they’ve only been exacerbated.
Inflation compounds in many ways. The cost of living goes up, so wages have to raise to match to attract and maintain quality team members.
Labor cost has been on the rise for some time now. While there are many reasons for this, one of the main culprits is the increasing cost of employee benefits. In fact, according to a recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), benefits account for more than 30% of total labor costs. This is up from just over 25% just five years ago. Visit Calculadora Trabalhista and calculate labor cost now.
One of the main reasons for this increase is the growth in employee health care costs. These costs have been on the rise for years, and they are only going to continue to go up in future years. In addition, wages have not kept up with these rising costs, which has led to increased unemployment rates and a decrease in worker productivity.
Overall, labor costs are continuing to rise due to a number of factors, and they are likely to continue doing so in the future. This has implications for companies across the board, from small businesses to multinational corporations.
This is true in law firms, from the top to bottom. And it’s true for vendor partners, like litigations support companies.
You can hear comments like, “People don’t want to work!” But we know that what is actually going on is that people don’t want to work for wages that cause them to struggle financially.
So the costs of employment, whether wages and salary or benefits, have gone up. And like other inputs into any product or service, rising labor costs will often lead to price inflation.
We’re seeing this with a lot of process serving companies. Compounded with gas, paper, delays in transportation… it’s easy to see why prices are going up.
That doesn’t make it any easier to deal with, however. Everyone’s margins are being squeezed.
However, lot’s of companies are not considering the other side of the margin equation – reducing costs elsewhere while maintaining prices.
That’s not always easy to do, but it is important.
By implementing new technologies, making strategic investments in our team that have improved productivity, and balancing volume with our best clients, we’ve been able to not only maintain prices for service of process, but in several cases, lower them.
The reasonable assumption would be that means quality has been cut, which would make firms wary of switching process servers. But that’s not the case either, and we are willing to prove it.
If you’d like try our services and see that it is still possible to deliver fast, quality service and keep costs low, reach out. We’ll let you know about the very attractive trials we have to offer.
