Alternatively, maybe it's the optimal strat (in terms of maximizing profit) to only be open 4 days a week/or be short staffed. If so, that's fine too.
Yeah, lots of businesses would be booming if they didn't have to pay market rate for key materials. You don't see many articles about manufacturers saying "my business would be booming if I only had to pay half the going rate for steel!"
Plus there are a ton of other factors affecting employees that I really wish reporters would research more. Just a few the ones I've heard:
* Got a different (often better) job
* Went back to school full-time to get or finish a degree
* Lack of transportation - sold their car during COVID and can't afford to buy one now
* Lack of childcare - can't find or afford childcare now (demand is pushing up prices there too)
* Staying home with the kids - after being forced to do it some people decided staying home to raise the kids is a better life and they could afford to do it
* Unemployment is still paying better than any job they can find
* Retired - some people were putting it off and others decided to retire early rather than go back to work
* Long COVID - still sick or physically impaired months later
* Dead - COVID or other causes
Long-COVID is the one I would personally like to see statistics around. I know a couple people in their 30s and 40s that are still unable to function normally 6+ months after being seriously sick with COVID.
They're doing that and adding benefits, too. From the article:
> The Wacky Knacky Diner in Osage Beach, Mo., near the Lake of the Ozarks, boosted wages to $20 an hour, then added health benefits and a retention bonus.
There's more to the article than businesses complaining that people won't take their jobs at fixed wages. It's about how businesses are adapting, raising wages, adding benefits, turning away customers, and management is taking advantage of the lull by taking their own vacations.
The article also highlights some of the temporary roadblocks to getting people back into the workforce will naturally go away in the next few months, such as parents who are home with children while school is out for summer:
> A survey by Indeed found most job-seekers plan to start working within the next three months, but many are waiting for schools to reopen, vaccination levels to rise or for their personal savings — boosted by unemployment benefits and three rounds of federal relief payments — to run out.