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My read on this, beyond data and MBA's, is that all of the slack has been pulled out of the economy.

This is a silly analogy but it's like integer truncation has been applied everywhere blindly. Staffing model says you need 2.5 employees on average to handle the load? You get 2. Everywhere with everything.

And modern technology / weak labor market has made this worse. I worked retail in high school in 90s and we basically had a weekly somewhat regular schedule. It was very rare to get sent home early.

Now you hear about people being "on call" for basically minimum wage jobs, called in for half shifts, sent home early, etc. Stringing together 40 hours at a job like this is basically a job in itself.

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