It’s not that people don’t want to work — it’s that they don’t want to work for so little. 

By Rebekah Entralgo | May 12, 2021/OtherWords.org

Assorted Ideas, Large & Small

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

The sudden shift from “we love our essential workers” to “they’re living off the government dole” seemingly happened overnight.

Across the country, local media coverage has been filled with stories of business owners lamenting that they are unable to fill positions as economies reopen.

“We are short-staffed. Please be patient with the staff who did show up. Nobody wants to work anymore,” reads a sign outside a McDonalds drive-thru window in Texas, according to a viral internet video.

These viral anecdotes, in addition to a weaker than expected April jobs report, have raised concerns over a labor shortage in the United States and how to best address it. The Wall Street Journal reports a record 8.1 million job openings across the country.

But it’s not that people don’t want to work — it’s that they don’t want to work for so little.

Dan Price, the CEO of Gravity Payments who raised the starting wage at his company to $70,000, recently said he gets 300 applications for every opening.

It turns out there’s no “labor shortage” — just a shortage of people who will work for starvation wages, especially during a pandemic that’s hit low-wage workers the hardest. What we are witnessing now is a reckoning and reassessment of the future of work.

But rather than think critically about why so many workers are hesitant to return, some pundits and right-wing politicians blame unemployment benefits. President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan provides an extra $300 a week for those out of work during the pandemic.

The GOP now wants to take that away. Republican governors from Montana, South Dakota, Utah, Iowa, and Arkansas, for example, have already announced they will cut unemployment benefits in order to force more people back to work.

If Republicans truly wanted to abide by their free market ideals, they would recognize that in order to stay competitive, employers must adapt to the demands of the market and pay their workers what they are worth.

Instead, they’re opting to slash unemployment benefits, oppose significant increases in the federal minimum wage, and have the government subsidize businesses by forcing employees to rely on assistance like food stamps to get by. Same as it ever was.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the reality that our economy is dependent on exploitation. As the virus spread, many workers watched their bosses prioritize profit over the lives of employees, who risked their health and lives to work frontline jobs during a pandemic that killed over 500,000 people in this country.