And yet they pay substantially better wages with better benefits on average. Even labor law compliance is much better (not to mention that small businesses are exempt from many regulations in the first place).

Not sure about that. The benefits are better and more structured and there are multitudes of articles about how they are much much harder to access, leaving most workers partially dependent on state benefits

Mom and pop shops often just don't offer benefits at all. Go slightly bigger and they'll have a health plan that's easy to enroll in but the premiums and co-pays will make your eyes water.

Thats true, but they also arent usually sophisticated enough to use a LEAN scheduling approach and combine it with budgeted hours that keep you under the benefits line + an approach of expendability to their workers.

Until one of us creates a free-ish software to help them do that ofc.