While I get that you don't see how more income leads to more ability to job hunt for a better job, I would like to ask why you think it is that when people got stimulus checks they started leaving their current wage slave job for better ones in droves?
There is still a labor shortage, where did you think it came from? Unemployment benefits don't apply to people who quit, or were fired for cause, and for most people out of work from the pandemic days, they are fully exhausted, and have been since the first week of sept when the federal """handout""" ended. Nobody who didn't lose their job this calendar year still has employment benefits. Yet there is still a labor shortage for bottom rung jobs?
Its almost like a bunch of people now having the means to eat the cost of job hopping did their job hopping and are working better jobs.
Now lets look at about why that might be...
>Surely at least you can send out some applications from your phone on your daily 2 hour commute to work.
Doesn't matter if you can't afford to take the job.
This is what people who haven't been poor recently don't understand...
If you can not afford to have your first paycheck delayed by a week to 3 weeks without either running out of gas or bus money to get to work(!), or ending up past the final date (!!) on a utility bill or rent bill, why would you waste your time applying to jobs?