← GlossaryLabor
Seasonal crew
The staff hired for the playing season — often students, often returning, and in much of the country most of the crew.
A northern course might run five people in March and eighteen in July. Every one of those eighteen needs onboarding, a pay rate, a schedule and a safety briefing, and most of them will do it again next year with a different start date.
Turnover is not a failure here, it is the model. What costs money is re-teaching the same person the same course every April because nothing was written down.
Goes deeper
The labor shortage, in actual numbers
Three quarters of superintendents call hiring difficult. Labor is 57% of the operating budget. Here's what the data says, and the handful of things a small course can genuinely do about it.