Americans don't know how bad they have it and don't remember the mass layoffs of the 1980's and 1990's. A time when jobs became scarce because nearly every company was following suit and REAL unemployment, including those who stopped looking for jobs, rose considerably. The REAL labor participation rate in the US is more like 55% rather than 62% due to the rosy and flawed methodology used to count U-1 through U-6. There are millions fewer middle-aged workers now than there were historically. Ageism, discrimination, and other factors discourage workers from seeking to reenter the workforce. Low skill workers have it worst, cannot always move great distances, and cannot always retrain into magical hypothetical jobs that don't exist. Many underemployed people become Uber and Lyft drivers, where there is the perception of freedom but there is net underpayment and abuse (no help with capitalization, depreciation, and maintenance of a vehicle make their effective pay well below that of taxi drivers).

The global situation is the US Fed's fault for giving out free money for years and then suddenly being a Grinch because they don't like "excess consumption" when there have been shortages and supply chain disruptions. US trucking is still a mess.