Ocean City sees increasing allotment for J1 workers ahead of summer season

OCEAN CITY, Md – Restaurants in Ocean City staffing up with J-1 immigrant workers ahead of the Memorial Day start of the Summer Season, will have more workers for the first time since 2020 to help fill jobs across the service sector.

“J-1s are vital to operating many, many operations in Ocean City because the seasonal workforce is not sufficient enough, the local one absolutely isn’t,” said Cole Taustin of Taustin restaurant group, saying that at his BLU Crabhouse location, he expects to have over 30 workers this summer.

He attributes the stability and large number of workers to the efforts his group took to build employee housing in West Ocean City, but the Ocean City Chamber of Commerce says the increase in J1s is city-wide, stemming from a more generous allocation from the department of labor and lower rejection rate for applicants in 2024.

“last summer, we had about 2900 J-1 exchange visitors working in the Ocean City area. And this year we’re looking at 3600. So this is the biggest numbers we’ve had post-pandemic,” said OC Chamber of Commerce President Amy Thompson.

Thompson says the housing supply for the J-1 workers has also been scaled up across the town, including the chamber encouraging more businesses to vertically integrate workforce housing with their operation.

“That’s really driven by some some some nice tweaks that are happening on the housing front, there is the old Phillips restaurant has been converted into dorm-style living for up to 300 J-1 students this summer, which is a huge help,” she said.

However, Taustin says housing restrictions could still be eased across Ocean City to help allow more businesses to get into the housing space, including what he says is a costly requirement for buildings to carry on hand 50 percent of the cash required to make any repairs a building may need for the next 5 years.

Taustin tells WMDT that 2023 was a slow summer, due in part to uncooperative weather conditions on the weekends, and hopes that 2024 can be a better summer to help scale up, with more live events and music venues to help satisfy growing customer demands.

However, both those growth fields, require docile weather.

“If we have a May and June like we did last year, it’s going to hurt. It hurt a lot of us, especially those of us with outdoor dining. I know a lot of my colleagues suffered. Fortunately, July and August were very, very good last year,” he said adding “We hope that when [tourists] do come, we want to make sure that we’re respecting every dollar that they spend with us by providing them with the best possible experience.”

Taustin tells WMDT he hopes that housing can be scaled up, as with the longer shoulder season they are looking to hire more local workers who can be available from mid-August to October.