This is a bit of a strawman. There are a lot of factors influencing the decision on both sides. That $2500 will leave a gap in your resume, both literally and from an experience perspective. The $3000 on the other hand ignores a ton of externalities: Cost of commuting, childcare, etc. plus the associated hours. In a real sense it could be $2500 a month raising your kids, or $1500 a month in real income after childcare/commuting for 50 hours all in.

A business has a number of levers to pull if they want to suppress wages; outsourcing (nationally and internationally) is usually the primary means. How do you suggest we increase the value of people's time without the Government setting the floor? (not to say the Government is the only way - just 'A' way).

A lot of the jobs in question don't care about resume gaps (especially during a pandemic) and are not outsourceable. For instance, restaurant, customer service, and retail is hard-hit right now. (I am in this line of work). You cant hire someone in Bangladesh to work those jobs, and you don't care if they were unemployed last year.

But it's also impossible to pay them $10k a month. It's literally not mathematically possible. It's not a case of greed. The profit margins simply aren't fat enough. Around me, they're paying $15 to $16 an hour which is pretty generous and about what I'm making right now.

At the end of the day, there is a huge shortage of labor. We know this because the workforce participation rate is at multidecade record lows. You can tell employers just to pay more, but it's not going to solve the fundamental issue. That's like trying to resolve the housing crisis by telling home shoppers to simply pay more and then wringing your hands of it.

Funny that all the news articles I read where a restaurant or business increases their starting wage to north of $13/hour, they get thousands of applicants.

I think it's amazing that all the free market advocates don't want a free market for labor. If employers want more employees, they simply have to pay more.

Workforce participation is at a low because workers in low paying jobs have looked around and realized their jobs suck, are low paying, and are looking to change to a better career.

> … "and are looking to change to a better career."

Lotta folks done or are in process of exactly that. I know folks who learned or improved various computer skills during the lockdown time and now have zero plans of goin' back to their crappy job from before.

Even that's pretty generous; average monthly wage for $15/h is about $2600. So the marginal income is as low as $100 for 40 hours of work in places with the highest minimum wage. Combined with the fact that the poll sums to over 130%, a significant number of respondents had multiple reasons to turn down work, this story is a bit of a nothingburger.

The government has neither the means nor desire to push the price to infinity. It normally pays starvation wages and for another 6 weeks will continue to pay a barely livable wage before returning to starvation wages.

Most the jobs they can't fill are 24 hours per week 8-12 bucks an hour slog fests for the not so princely sum of 800-1200 whereas people are getting paid 2500 in unemployment benefits NOT full time jobs paying substantially more than unemployment.

Your concerns are fanciful.

I make $15.60 an hour at my job. These 'concerns' are my day-to-day life.

As an employee making 15.60 what precisely is your concern with any temporary distortion of the price of low wage labor? I don't see how you could lose exactly?

Something that is good for me at the expense of everyone else probably shouldn't be happening.

People are getting $2,500?

My brother is fully disabled and unable to work, and he gets $1,200.

If you file for unemployment in my state right now, you'll get around $650 every week. Some states such as Massachusetts were paying as much as $1800 weekly with the federal bonus added in.

Is this 2500 taxed or tax free?

Imo after all taxes, a lot of 40 hr/wk salaries are a meaningless gain over $2500

UI income is taxable.

Sort of. Currently there is a huge temporary? exclusion.

https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/new-exclusion-of-up-to-10200-...

Also, don't know if it's still going on now but when all these extra federal unemployment payments started, they were an extra $600 per week no matter how much state unemployment you qualified for. So, e.g. if you were a student who worked 10 hr/week part time, you received an extra $600/wk on top of your state money (which wouldn't be much because you worked so few hours).

https://www.dol.gov/coronavirus/unemployment-insurance#:~:te....

Unemployment insurance was a godsend for desperate full-time service workers who lost their jobs in the pandemic, but it was also an insane boondoggle for part timers.