The truth behind America’s labor shortage is we’re not ready to rethink work

In a strange time of the economy reopening and normal life “returning,” millions of Americans want more for their work. Employers aren’t so sure.

The labor-shortage trend has less to do with too few workers and more to do with rethinking labor. Photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images

By Juliana Kaplan and Ben Winck

Workers were tired before the pandemic. Now they’re reaching a breaking point.

“These guys are just dumbasses if they actually think that the UI is the problem and not the wage,” Matt Mies, an unemployed 28-year-old, told Insider.

He was referring to the dozens of Republican governors who have cited a so-called labor shortage, which they’ve blamed on the “disincentive” created by an expanded federal unemployment benefit from President Joe Biden’s stimulus package. The leaders, who govern nearly half of the 50 states, have moved to cancel the benefit early, stripping it from millions within weeks.

Economists had largely expected jobless Americans would rush back to work as vaccines rolled out and the country reopened, but that all changed on May 7, when the government’s monthly payrolls report showed much-weaker-than-expected job gains of 266,000 in April. That seemed to confirm the labor shortage was real.

Mies, who was a ground-crew worker in Hollywood before the pandemic, said most jobs like his had moved out of…