Have you noticed the shortage of restaurant and other workers?

Carol Roth says the government is part of the problem in “Businesses trying to thrive after COVID should not have to compete with government for workers,” her recent opinion piece.

Carol says that extra bonus for not working is incentivizing a lot of workers to stay home when jobs are plentiful. She begins:

As more locales are emerging from government lockdown mandates and more individuals are getting vaccinated, business should be booming.

Earlier this month, economists were expecting as much, projecting that around a million new jobs would have come back in April. However, it was reported that only 266,000 incremental jobs were added last month, a tremendous miss.

How could this be? Certainly, many businesses — particularly small businesses — were forever shuttered under the weight of government lockdown mandates. However, as you drive around the country, you will see that businesses that have managed to survive are now hiring.

Some are offering signing bonuses ranging from a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars to work in restaurants, construction, casinos and other businesses. Others are boosting their wages and still reporting having a hard time finding workers for the more than 8 million jobs available per last week’s JOLTS report.

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