Every summer a portion of MU students stay in town and look for employment opportunities. What those students might have found is many businesses were loyal to their school-year employees and unwilling to hire seasonal workers.

“We had a lot of students that went home for summer break,” Red Mango Store Manager Brittney Scott said.

To compensate for its employees leaving for the summer, Scott said Red Mango is relying on its management team and will not be hiring new employees for the summer.

Similarly, Hot Box Cookies owner Corey Rimmel did not hire new employees for the summer season, but stuck with his long-term workers.

“My professional strategy when I hire people, is I hire a lot of my friends that I can trust or a lot of residents of Columbia that I know are going to be here all the time,” Rimmel said.

Fewer students on campus means less business traffic in many ways, causing businesses to not need as many employees.

“We don’t really need as many workers in the summer, so it just kind of all evens out,” MU Libraries spokeswoman Shannon Cary said of Ellis Library.

At Ellis Library, there is a considerable difference between the amount of students hired this summer and the amount hired last summer.

“We hired fewer students this summer than last summer,” Cary said. “What usually happens is most students graduate at the end of the spring semester. But if they don’t graduate, they may not work over the summer, but they stay on or they’re hired right back in the fall, so it’s not like those people really leave. They just take the summer off.”

As with MU Libraries, Hot Box was less called upon during the summer months when students were not on campus.

“I did have a lot of employees that did leave, but I actually still had too many because business slows down in the summer quite a bit, so I don’t really need as many employees,” Rimmel said.