It's easy to hire people, you just have to offer better wages. The issue is that they can't find anybody willing to work for the wage they are offering, which is very different from not being able to find people to hire.
> it’s not like they are using this time to pursue productive hobbies
Any studies on this?
...because the government is paying them not to work. That's the point. And that means no skills are being trained, no discipline is being developed, and no experience is being attained learning customer service and the basics of business economics.
I worked in a convenience store for minimum wage ($4.25/hour) for four years when I was younger. A little more than a decade later I owned my own retail store. Believe me, it's a long trip from stocking a drink cooler and scrubbing the toilets (what I did on my first day) to opening your own retail establishment. But that story is quite common - many dishwashers become restaurant owners, line cooks become chefs, and stockers become store managers.
Your point about wages isn't really cogent. I'm a degreed Computer Scientist and software professional with decades of experience and I'll flip burgers for the right wage. But most won't be able to afford to buy them and they certainly won't find the cost-value appealing. And when the cost of those burgers goes up, UBI and whatever other creative ways we justify paying people not to work will have to go up too.
You're saying that like people on unemployment are only those about to enter the job market. That's not going to be the case - there's lots of people with existing experience who lost jobs. And realistically only a small fragment of that group would advance so the whole missed experience is a bit sus.
Well of course, but that's not what we're talking about. There are a huge number of service industry jobs that were filled prior to the pandemic that are no longer filled. It appears those people are largely unemployed and apparently happy to stay that way. Such is the expected consequence of paying people not to work.
While this is accurate, it ignores OP's point that they were willing to work for those wages pre-pandemic, but now the government is paying them something equivalent to 'sit around' (per OPs point).
Is it the job of the employer to raise wages or the government's job to pay people to work vs sitting? Maybe we should bring back the Civil Works Administration
But when the situation is flipped around, and there is a shortage of labor instead? Suddenly the same rules don't apply, "supply and demand" isn't what should rule the price point for labor, instead, these companies are entitled to cheap labor. If people are unwilling to work for the wages offered, it's the people who are defect, not the wages offered.
There is nothing easy in just offering better wages, not least in industries where the bulk of the costs are wages and where productivity is often low.
Yet nothing was done about this because that's just the market for you, supply and demand, and you just gotta have two jobs if one doesn't pay enough to live. All while American industry has been booming.
But when the hurt happens on the industry instead? When circumstance means that they would have to pay more? That cannot be tolerated, no industry or business should ever have to be in economical turmoil because of shifting economical circumstances, that's only for the little people to deal with.
This power imbalance means that the employee will often not complain about having wages stolen, complain about safety violations, or even be able to bargain fairly for the value of their labor. It's real hard to strike a fair business exchange with somebody who has a metaphorical gun pointed at your head.
Due to these unemployment benefits, that gun is gone for a lot of people, and they can push back harder and say that "no, the terms you are offering me for my labor is not good, I will not take this job" and the industries and businesses are losing their shit over this. Economical trouble and turmoil is for the "small people" to suffer, they shouldn't have to offer better wages to navigate a shifting economical landscape, they are entitled to cheap labor.
Meanwhile, despite this downwards trend that's been shrinking the middle class in America, American industry has actually been booming the last ten years. America is richer than ever before, but it's workers are paid (due to inflation) less than they were.
So it's real hard to emphasize with the businesses who are seeing thinner margins because of higher labor costs.
But, regardless people are opting to stay home with government benefits over slightly better earnings via work. So they are okay with having less money if it means doing nothing.