What I’m sharing today is an illustration of how something can be going on all around you and you be clueless about it. In this case that “something” is an issue all of us need to keep an eye on. 

A few weeks ago, I went through the drive-through of one of my favorite local restaurants. Not only is their food very good, but it’s prepared super-fast, which means you get your food quickly and hot off the grill (it’s not a fast-food place, for the record). On this day, the line for lunch struck me as unusually long, but knowing how fast they were I knew it wouldn’t take any time to get my food. 

I knew something was wrong when some 10 minutes later I finally got up to the speaker to order and before I could say a word, a voice came through saying “I can only fix one thing today, because I am by myself.”

It was the owner, whom I have known for the 15 or so years I’ve been eating there. When I got to the window to get my food, with tears in his eyes he said “I have no one to come work. They all quit. I pay good, but nobody wants to work now.”

The whole thing bugged me. I posted about it on my Facebook page, and immediately got a flood of responses from literally all over the nation mirroring the same scenario: for whatever reason, in the last few weeks a significant number of American workers have simply walked away from their jobs. 

I was stunned. I had absolutely no idea this was going on until this episode. It was only then that I noticed how many restaurants and businesses in general have “Help Wanted” signs hung in front of them. Another local restaurant owner shared that he had been forced to stay with a ‘drive thru only’ arrangement because he simply didn’t have enough help to operate his dining room. 

And, it’s clear this is not just happening in our restaurants. American businesses are all ready to start getting over the pandemic, but they just can’t find people willing to work for them. 

There are all kinds of theories as to why this is happening. One line of thinking says that too many workers got a combination of stimulus money and income tax checks at the same time, and the ‘big’ money in their bank account made them feel secure in simply saying ‘I don’t need a job.’ The other line feels that perhaps these workers were finally armed with enough money to take a break to look for better jobs, and the application process may have become too convoluted as well.

I’m not saying either is wrong. But a cursory look at the math of the situation paints an undeniably eye-opening picture.

The Daily Mail — a British newspaper no less — shared last week that in March 2019, the average weekly payment to an unemployed person was $348 when combining federal and state unemployment payments. That nearly tripled to $938 in April 2020 when Trump passed CARES, a temporary economic plan that boosted weekly unemployment payments by $600 and also gave employed people one-off stimulus checks that expired last summer. 

Today the average weekly unemployment check is $638, still $300 more than before the pandemic, and it’ll stay that way until at least September. 

Add it up, and someone who was working 40 hours a week before the pandemic can now potentially get nearly $16-an-hour to do absolutely nothing, more than double the federal minimum wage of $7.25. 

Bank of America estimates that anyone who earned $32,000 before the pandemic can now get more than that from a combination of state and federal unemployment benefits. They are also allowed to claim those benefits for up to 39 weeks — nearly a full year — whereas before it was capped at 26 weeks. 

Oh, by the way — the average starting salary for a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree in Georgia? $34,872.

Odd that American media outlets don’t have much coverage about any of this, isn’t it?

Some states have seen enough. The governors of Alabama and Mississippi announced last week their states would be opting out in June. They join Montana, South Carolina and Arkansas, who all announced last week they too will exit the federal programs.

Arizona’s governor reinstated some requirements waived during the pandemic for unemployed workers to receive benefits. Vermont’s work search requirements for those receiving benefits were also reinstated as of this week.

Now other states are discussing similar measures after an alarming report from the Department of Labor showed the economy added a woeful 266,000 jobs in April, a far cry from the more than 1 million jobs most experts predicted and expected to see.

There has to be an explanation for such a grossly skewed number. While I’m sure there are other factors in play, as well-intended as it might have been it’s becoming clear we may have overplayed our helping hand. Human nature dictates that if someone can do little to nothing and survive, that’s pretty much what they will do. But someone doing nothing and profiting from it? It flies in the face of common sense. 

And, as a result, the helping hand offered needs to be quickly put back in our own pocket to hopefully motivate others to lift their own hands to help themselves.