My sister went from making $11/hr at a book store to $20/hr staying at home on unemployment. She didn't spend any of it on anything but rent and utilities (we were already providing food for her). She went from being in debt to having about $9k in the bank. She plans to live on this until it runs out and then return to work as a service worker. She moved in with my mother to make that runway longer--she figures she can make it last somewhere between a year or two.
I don't think she's unique in this. A lot of millenials were poorly educated with job skills and personal finance. Accordingly, they dug themselves into debt with student loans and credit cards that obligated them to take shitty service jobs with no prospects. COVID-19 and extended unemployment benefits let them dig themselves out of that hole by doing nothing, but they still don't have an internal motivation that money and assets are good things to acquire.
They work to live, not live to work. They won't go back into the workforce until their personal circumstances force them back into the workforce and I don't blame them at all.
I looked at the department of labor's website for hard numbers. May 2021 U-3 unemployment is below 6% and seems like a very, very typical level for any point over the past 20 years. If someone is saying "I can't hire people because no one wants to work"...I'm having trouble seeing how that's any more true now vs. in 2014, 2006, or 1999.
Sure, there's an increase in people collecting unemployment vs 2 years ago but those were at historically low levels. What we have today seems much, much more normal/typical.
This seems to imply millennials are lazy. They're the most educated generation in US history, and at the same time, the poorest in at least 60 years.
COVID relief funds are only paying them more than their normal wage because they got paid so badly to begin with. All older generations have averages incomes significantly higher than what COVID unemployment pays. And that's despite Millennials being more educated than all of these prior generations.
It's finally given many of them the freedom and agency to choose their jobs rather than take the first thing they can find to avoid going broke. Many of these people looking for jobs were also the first laid off at the beginning of the pandemic. Why should we feel bad for companies that treated these people as disposable?
There's not a "worker shortage". Companies are complaining that they have to raise wages to attract talent because workers are shopping around and getting counter offers.
This is not unprecedented. The same phenomenon happened after the Spanish flu, and was arguably a big factor in the collapse of the fuedal system during the black death.
Wide scale destruction of jobs followed by increased demand gives workers leverage. You have a huge group of people not afraid of being jobless because they already have been.
We have to remember that 600k people are dead too. A decent chunk of available labor is gone forever.
COVID restrictions blocking employers from hiring foreign labor is also a factor. There's increased competition for American workers because it's harder to import cheap labor
I read today that 3.2 million baby boomers retired last year, many of them retiring early due to Covid. In addition, as deviledeggs said, Covid has killed many people. I don't remember the exact number but I think at least 100,000 of the deaths were of working-age adults. In addition, Covid has disabled many more so severely that they are unable to return to work. So I would say at a minimum, we're now looking at 3.5 million people who are out of the workforce.
If businesses had prioritized helping employees stay safe, they would have more employees now.
Nevermind what the Wall Street Journal is reporting and what the unemployment data is, clearly millennials are lazy and that is the problem based on my experience with my lazy sister.
I don't think she's unique in this. A lot of millenials were poorly educated with job skills and personal finance. Accordingly, they dug themselves into debt with student loans and credit cards that obligated them to take shitty service jobs with no prospects. COVID-19 and extended unemployment benefits let them dig themselves out of that hole by doing nothing, but they still don't have an internal motivation that money and assets are good things to acquire.
They work to live, not live to work. They won't go back into the workforce until their personal circumstances force them back into the workforce and I don't blame them at all.