The labor shortage is causing havoc in the Hamptons, with understaffed restaurants, beauty salons booked up for weeks, and no one to mow the lawns

People wearing face masks walk by Main Street n Southampton, New York.

KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty Images

• Hamptons residents and businesses say they can't find enough workers.
• Soaring rents and a ban on visas for temporary workers is making it hard to live and work there.
• A restaurant owner is doubling as a handyman. A resident said he'd taken to mowing his own lawn.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

Hamptons residents and businesses are scrambling to find workers during the growing US labor shortage - and one said he had to take off his $800 sneakers to trim the weeds because a landscaper didn't show up.

"I had to buy a lawnmower and cut my own lawn. I wanted flowers planted behind the pool. The landscaper didn't show up. I had to do it myself," one Hamptons resident told Vanity Fair. "My brother just showed me how to use the thing that trims the weeds. Yesterday, I finally did that. I had to take my $800 sneakers off first, but it was actually satisfying."

A combination of soaring rents across Long Island, laws that crack down on shared houses, and a previous ban on visas for temporary workers has made it difficult for people to live and work in the area.

Local businesses such as restaurants and beauty salons say they can't find enough workers to do the job.

Eric Lemonides, co-owner of Almond restaurant in Bridgehampton, told The New York Times that he's had to close his restaurant two days a week because he can't find enough cooks.

"It's just been harder than it's ever been before," he told The Times.

He's taken on multiple other roles - power washing the sidewalks and becoming the restaurant's handyman - because "there is no one else to do it," he said.

Demand is also sky-high at the moment. Zach Erdem, who owns Southampton hotspots 75 Main and Blu Mar, said he's been completely booked out since he reopened at the start of June.

Other businesses say they have weeks-long waiting lists.

Annie Barton, owner of The Salon & Day Spa in Amagansett, told Vanity Fair that "the phone is ringing off the hook" and her employees are working "nonstop from the minute they arrive to the minute they leave."

"Everyone's going for the natural look this year," one East Hampton resident told Vanity Fair, describing how impossible it is to get a booking at a beauty salon this summer.

If you are a business struggling to find workers please contact this reporter at mhanbury@businessinsider.com.

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