As the pace of business reopening continues apace across the country, there seems to be a shortage of workers willing to take jobs for what had previously paid the minimum prevailing wage. Here in the North Country, that wage was in the $10-12 range and aside from farm and orchard work, most retail establishments had little trouble filling them. My oldest daughter worked several jobs in the local mall while studying at the local community college nursing program and found there were many applications for even the lowliest jobs. Now, those same jobs are begging for applicants.
There are many news stories being written regarding the worker shortages. The most popular is federal and local unemployment benefits are too generous and are keeping "lazy" workers on the sidelines. We are about to find out how true this trope is as many states are now refusing the additional $300/week in supplemental federal benefits. These same states are preparing to knock any worker off their unemployment benefits if they fail to take virtually any job offered to them.
The second strain of stories being written about the worker shortage is about businesses who have upped their starting salaries to $15/hour while raising the wages of veteran employees who were already making that much. Very often, these businesses received many applications and noticed their employees were upping their game as far as customer service is concerned.
I am sure some of the worker shortage is caused by the "generous" government benefits people have been collecting during the course of the pandemic. However, due to less immigration and a falling birthrate, there are less people available who are willing to accept jobs which don't pay a living wage. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the months to come.
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