Nearly two-thirds of US companies are planning to require at least some of their workers to get vaccinated against Covid-19 regardless of whether they are legally bound to do so, according to a survey of thousands of employers.
The figures from a survey of more than 6,000 US employers show far more companies now say they intend to implement a vaccine mandate than had said they would eight months ago. More companies in the US are planning to do so compared with Europe, where vaccination rates are largely higher and where some governments have imposed their own mandates on individuals.
Joe Biden, the US president, announced earlier this year that all US businesses with 100 employees or more would have to order their employees either to get vaccinated or test negative for the virus every week. That proposal is now on hold while a court decides whether it can go ahead, but Manpower Group, which conducted the research, said companies had begun to respond to it anyway.
Jonas Prising, Manpower’s chief executive, told the Financial
Times: “Biden’s announcement has had as much of a signaling effect as it will have an influence through enforcement. It was very useful for many employers who wanted to implement a mandate anyway, but were then able to say to their workers that they had to in anticipation of the government rule.”
Manpower’s survey shows that 27 percent of US companies plan to insist all workers are double-vaccinated, another 18 percent plan to insist everyone is triple-vaccinated, and another 18 percent intend to implement mandates only for some staff.
When Manpower asked a similar question in March, it found only 4 percent of employers planned to require vaccinations. In Europe, only half of the companies surveyed said they would bring in any kind of vaccine mandate.