The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the November job openings and turnover data today [DATA HERE] showing 370,000 workers quit their jobs in November bringing the quits rate now to 4.5 million people.
From the report, “Quits increased in several industries with the largest increases in accommodation and food services (+159,000); health care and social assistance (+52,000); and transportation, warehousing, and utilities (+33,000).”
Over the 12 months ending in November 2021, hires totaled 74.5 million and separations totaled 68.7 million, yielding a net employment gain of 5.9 million for 2021. However, while the unemployment rate drops with fewer people working, the employment picture overall appears to be tenuous.
The FRED personal savings rate for Americans overall [DATA HERE] has been dropping rapidly since March 2021, the last federal COVID employment bailout injection. All of the federal assistance has created massive data skews in the savings rate, as federal subsidies gave an artificial boost to the U.S. savings rate.
It appears that the aggregate American worker is now using their savings, created by COVID bailouts, to offset the massive inflation created by the COVID bailouts. The net result is a workforce going into negative savings each month as inflation driven expenses (energy, fuel, food) are higher than earnings. This is an unsustainable situation.
There is obviously a large retirement factor in the quits rate; however, it does appear the vaccination mandate is also a major influence. Additionally, when talking about people living paycheck-to-paycheck, rapid inflation almost always causes job-jumping for workers to get higher wages.
According to the BLS data, in November the job openings rate decreased in small establishments with 10-49 employees. This could be due to employees returning to small business, and/or there are fewer small businesses around to be hiring.
The hires rate rate increased in very large employers with 5,000 or more employees. However, the quits rate increased in both small businesses with 1-9 employees and in medium-sized businesses (1,000 to 4,999 employees). The I9 contracted workers are also leaving small and mid-size employers.
Then comes a significant aspect, “both the layoffs and discharges rate -and the total separations rate- increased in the larger establishments with 1,000 to 4,999 employees.” This could indicate mid-sized businesses are starting to see contractions in sales or demand and lowering their payrolls. This outlook would match the productivity drops we noted last month.
(DECEMBER CTH) – “The value of all products and services generated increased by 1.8 percent. However, the labor cost of generating that small amount of added value increased by 7.4 percent. The difference between those two numbers is a drop in productivity of 5.2% over the entire quarter.
This is the largest quarterly drop in productivity since 1960 !
The Biden administration will blame the drop in productivity on a lack of material to produce the end product (ie. the COVID excuse). Which means employed people were sitting around waiting for goods to arrive and being less productive. There is a small amount of that which might be true. However, it is not the biggest factor, at least not on this scale. Keep in mind we are talking about both goods and services.
The more likely cause of such a massive decline in productivity is a genuine decline in demand. In the aggregate, consumers needed less goods and services. This likelihood aligns with the diminished and softened retail sales figures recently noted. It is a simple cause and effect. When gasoline, energy, and essential products like food cost more, consumers have less money for other stuff. Demand for the non-essential products drop.” (more)
When we look at the macro picture, things look a lot clearer than the financial pundits talk about.
After the March 2021 peak of savings rate (massive fed spending bill), sometime around June of 2021, the U.S. economy overall started to jam up. In May of 2021 the first round of massive inflation started, what the Fed and White House called “transitional”, but we noted it wasn’t.
Then, new home housing starts, and contracts for new homes yet to be built suddenly stopped; while at the same time (June/July 2021) new permits for construction dropped. From that moment forward prices for food, fuel and energy related products started a massive upward spike. Despite the Fed and administration “transitional” talking points, the prices continued to climb and inflation was growing month over month.
The middle class and working class started to really feel the inflationary pain in the second half of 2021. It was not the Delta variant driving this economic pain, it was inflation and the collapse of disposable incomes. By the time we go to November 2021, suddenly the low employment gains shocked the financial pundits. A few weeks later, we saw sales data from November go down, and retail hiring for the holiday season was non-existent.
Take a look at the timeline in hindsight. At exactly the wrong time last year, September 2021, Joe Biden mandated vaccination for all U.S. workers. The economic data was sending signals that things were tenuous, but no one was paying attention. The already tenuous economy and labor pool (economists ignoring) was hit with an ultimatum of forced vaccination or get fired.
It’s not a single factor leading to this quits rate data. As you can see, there is a snowball effect inside the data. Wages earned, including any pay raises, have been chewed up by much higher inflation. When we look back upon this economy in a year, I am quite certain we will identify the inflection point as June of 2021. That’s when things peaked and started to go down.
Keep in mind, inflation has a big impact on job turnover. When people feel inflation, they look for pay raises. Larger employers are slower to respond to pay raises driven by worker needs, and many have very structured pay raise guidance.
Ex. if a worker needs a raise (immediate inflation driven), and the boss or organization is less responsive (structured pay raise schedule or performance review), the worker can get a faster pay raise by quitting their employer and going to work at a higher entry wage rate with another firm. If the job market is tight, the worker can make much more doing this. This is called job-jumping. In my opinion, this is a big factor right now.
So, what does the labor market look like in your town? What is going on in/around your community and local economy? Are you seeing a drop in spending habits overall for the people around you? The workforce hunkering down, forced to spend savings to survive and dealing with massive rising costs, will ultimately lead to less employment.
What do you see around you?
Spent 20 days on the road in December … 5,158 miles across 16 states. My global view is that the hotel and restaurant industries are in deep trouble. In hotel after hotel, we saw a lot of deferred maintenance, with key components such as elevators and heated pools/hot tubs down and out. Staffing issues, especially in housekeeping, are ubiquitous. A dramatic feature of this landscape is the increasing age of the housekeeping staff. In several hotels, we saw no one in the hallways less than 50 years +.
The restaurant industry is equally grim. We encountered staff shortages everywhere, and the workers that we observed were also much older than just a couple of years ago. The pattern was pretty much the same in every restaurant: fewer staff running their tails off to meet peak hour demand. As bad as the situation is now, therefore, I expect it to get worse as exhausted and demoralized employees quit their jobs, and supply chain disruptions continue to bite more and more deeply.
AntiWork is a growing movement. This one thread has 1.5 million members
https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/
http://antiworkblog.com/
https://abolishwork.com/
Three points:
1) Staff were not only visibly older, but visibly more female.
2) Workers in the 25-45 age range were pretty much non-existent.
3) Seven of the some 600 BBQ restaurants that I track have permanently closed since 18 December. Six of the seven were in small towns, only one in a metropolitan area. In smaller communities, we have noticed that many fast food chain outlets have shuttered their doors and gone to drive-through only.
My sister does the hiring for administrative staff at a large medical center in Arizona.
She said that nearly all of the applicants are age 50+.
We happened to stop at the grocery store in the town we moved from 3 years ago. My husband and I were incredulous that nearly all of the employees were past retirement age. That is not an exageration. Most of the workers had undoubtedly re-entered the workforce. We have been contemplating doing the same, but mask and jab mandates are a deal-breaker for us. The upside to employers hiring 50+ is that most have a strong work ethic, and the employers will get the cream of the crop for their workforce.
Speaking for my husband, 50+ year olds are a retail manager’s dream compared to lots of 18-30 year olds who have a hard time showing up for work or pulling an 8 hour shift. Sad, but true.
You are right about the work ethic, also.
Most of the older people, myself included own their cars and houses, don’t usually have student loans, etc. Younger folks are busy trying to pay for abnormally/historically expensive avg. vehicles along with paying extremely high rents, student loans, gasoline and other bills. If you can’t see why the younger people get discouraged it’s because they are lucky if they can pay for food after working overtime at a job. You can’t just bundle everyone into the same situation. In my younger days, even recently I worked 80+ hours a week solid. That being said, taxes eat a big chunk of any over-achievers income nowadays. It’s not worth the effort really.
Are you old enough to have experienced the 70’s, with its gas lines, runaway inflation and soaring interest rates? How about the 60’s, and that war we all got caught up in out in SW Pacific? Some generations are better prepared to deal with hard times than others. Easy times produce soft men, and the times have been easy for way too long.
In the early 90s, I was working two jobs
and eating hotdogs and chili for dinner regularly
It seems like we are back there again.
When was the last time we had a President and his whole administration trying to actively undermine the American people at every interval, or constantly turning the women and minorities against the white man for political purposes? You have no idea what you are talking about. The old generations had it easy, ( jobs that were lifetime appointment, good benefits that were cheap, or 100% company provided, etc.) these younger folks are in for a world of hurt. It sounds like you have been enjoying the easy times as have most older folks, like myself who could build up assets and whatnot, the younger people cannot build up anything. Don’t talk to me about high interest rates either, because right now they should be a lot higher and they aren’t, once again because we have an Administration and the FE=D Reserve colluding to actively undermine a whole generation of people. So maybe the times have been easy for some, but for others it has been a nightmare, so piss off!
Boomers arguing that they had it “rough” is one of the most laughable notions.
You inherited post-war a 90%+ white country, at its peak in power, influence, and wealth. You left it in ruins.
Most of the problems the US faces today — a ruined manufacturing sector, terrible monetary policy, insane housing prices, conspicuous consumption run rampant, permissive and degenerate culture, the entire ‘new-left/civil rights movement, and most importantly a toxic, narcissistic viewpoint — are squarely at the feet of boomers.
There is literally no other comparison in history — short of going back to end-of-Republic Rome — to the amount of wealth and influence squandered inside of a single generation. The only bright spot is that “millennials,” the enfant terrible spawn of the boomers — are just as awful and even worse. These little monsters are the foot soldiers of the “woke” and are actively attacking and tearing down their mommy and daddy who cry out in confusion. It’s sweet justice.
Ultimately, unfortunately, they’re even worse than their parents.
Squandered by who? These boomers you rail about only made one mistake. Voting in fake elections. All of our major cities have been destroyed and that is not courtesy of the working class.
I agree, been through those times. Too many people today want things handled to them and want it all in the moment. Now you know why we have become a nation of half sheep.
This weekend, we asked our 26 year old son to run an errand to deliver something less than an hour away. He showed up with his wife (21). I said “Oh, I didn’t know you were off work today”. She said “I wasn’t, but when he (our son) told me he was going to help you, I told my boss I wasn’t feeling well and could I go home and he said yes”. We were speechless. After they left, I thought about it and told hubby, I can honestly say I have never done that. He thought back and he hadn’t either. It’s astonishing that she did that, much less felt comfortable telling her in laws she did it. If she’s representative of the next generation, God help our son and our whole economy.
I’m 68 years old and still continue to be “on-call” as a speech pathologist at a rural hospital. Was called to fill in for a young gal because she took the jab and came down with Covid. Per discussion with the rehab director, they would require staff to be tested daily and mask as long as you were on-site. I said nuts to that! Covid directives are ruining everything.
what exactly is Covid? Do you have an isolate virus that causes this disease you talk about? What about contagion studies? Do you have any contagion studies that demonstrate contagion exists? If you do you immediately win the Nobel Prize and will be a millionaire.
I’ll bet those employers will do their best to hold on to those older employees after dealing with 20 somethings.
I agree. That’s a deal breaker for me too.
Is your sister hiring nurses that are unvaxxed?
I’m married to one with 22 years experience.
Many of the people I see being hired to carry mail at the Postal Service have grandchildren.
Calling it now, McDonalds shutters it doors this year.
That’s hilarious.
I was in a McDonald’s today in a small town in eastern PA. I’ve been in before and it’s always been clean and pleasant. It was filthy, I asked for a bag to sit on and a bag for the table. 3pm and cars were wrapped around the building, I guess it’s the Covidians on a 5 day holiday!
One of the first McD’s franchisees, whose family owns a number of stores including one in the small town I used live near, just tore down the decades old store last year in the middle of the pandemic and put up a brand new one with the latest automation. Progress!
Money quote in your comment: “WITH AUTOMATION”. That, friends, is the future of service industries.
We dined at a popular Italian eatery in Sept for my birthday, and the young female server was quite put off in her attitude. Food was great, service not so much. Plus, it was FREEZING cold in there!
Interesting, is it not, that in these circumstances, job applicants are mostly older folks – the ones raised with a work ethic, with morals, and with self-worth.
IWW, as in “I Won’t Work” was a “movement” at some distant point in the past, IIRC.
Wobblies
They didn’t even make it to the 89’s in America
I see envy, sloth, and wrath there right off the bat. Anything else? These people are in for a very rude awakening unless they snap out of it.
Plenty of gluttony too – but COVID-1984 has made a small inroad on that…
Someone will. If they pull off the re-set, independent self sufficient folks will be getting the rude awakening.
On one hand, it’s interesting to read the comments in those threads. The blind fumbling in the dark, grasping at the edges of salvation.
And then the fall right back down into the pit of believing communism will save them. So close… and yet so brainwashed.
Wow…But it makes sense; if Marxism is to succeed, work and private property both need to be abolished.
My Mom, sisters and I have celebrated an annual”Girls Weekend” for the past 40 years. We check into a hotel, shop and eat, and enjoy each other’s company. The past two years, when we were fortunate enough to find a hotel that was still open, we were offered a discount off our stay if we declined housekeeping. We were no longer offered a continental breakfast, and if you called the desk for anything at all, the calls went mostly unanswered.
The sidewalks and parking lots were unshovelled. My sister actually fell on the slippery sidewalk, and had a claim against a well-known hotel chain. The hotel industry is on life support. We are certainly not particularly needy consumers, yet had a difficult time getting basic services met. I agree with you that this industry is in deep trouble.
You have to make a special request at Disney World for room cleaning. Five hundred dollars a night and no housekeeping.
Holy crap. This is eye-opening in a most disturbing way.
Maybe Joe bite me can make us eat at certain times to reduce the load at dinner and lunch
You mean we can all keep him company on his sundowning & tapioca schedule?
One reason the hotels are in trouble is that people bought motorhomes and travel trailers and took to the outdoors because they could not get in theme parks and such during the lockdown.
Area lake parks were full every holiday.
I understand some national parks require reservations now
and drive throughs are limited.
Very good point. Good look to anyone trying to book Terlingua (Big Bend Natl. Park)!
And you do not want to know how nazi-fied and aggressively adversarial some of the staff have become in some parks. Here in the PNW it’s pretty bad.
We stay away now.
The Norfolk VA Zoo requires reservations now, and you can’t get the military discount in doing so. Likely need to be at the least masked to enter. The Smithsonian National Zoo in DC is under Draconian vax regulations…..downright depressing for us animal lovers.
Escalating gas prices will end that.
I am on my third job since moving to Florida in January, 2018. I moved to Naples in May and took the summer off to enjoy as many of the golf courses here as I could, then went to a major golf store for employment at the end of August to get some help with the cost of joining the golf club in my community. The pay is well above the state minimum wage, I get paid holidays, earn vacation time and am eligible for the company 401K, and I am only part time. Oh, and I get a nice discount at the store – which was the primary reason I chose the job. Many of my coworkers are elderly, the oldest being 84. One of them just left for a new job at higher pay that is much closer to where he lives. One of our young slackers got himself fired by refusing to comply with a request to do something very ordinary, inviting the asst. GM to fire him, which she did. I’m sure he got another job in short order. I am still on LinkedIn and the number of jobs available in my area is huge.
Oh, and at my busy barber shop today, nobody was wearing a mask!
We went to a popular local steakhouse for New Years dinner. All the servers, but one, were geriatric. An excellent meal, and we tipped accordingly.
While they should rightly be enjoying retirement, I don’t see the problem. Unless it was a “Hooters” kinda place… 🙂
I suspect that those “Quit” numbers include thousands of us that were fired in November. Or, in my own, and my colleagues, case, terminated on December 2nd, after placed on unpaid leave in October. Many employers in Oregon gave their employees, “Time to comply.” And maliciously did not not permit us to use vacation accrual hours during that time.
I see people that have become very comfortable living off of tax payers. I know many young, healthy, capable people choosing to play video games and get high. Sadly, some of them are relatives.
Myself and friends are hunkering down, buying in bulk, sharing with one another and being very cautious with our finances.
The world looks and feels ominous. Thankfully, we have strong faith and understand that God is our provider. Our strength comes from the Lord, the maker of Heaven and earth.
I pray that eyes will be opened and that the Holy Spirit will pour out discernment and those with eyes to see and ears to hear will lean into Him and stand with strength and courage against the force of evil, our enemy, the devil.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Ominous is a good descriptor. I’ve been lucky as far as mandates at work.. We can work from home without vaccines. For now. I suspect the axe will fall eventually unless scouts grows a backbone, which is doubtful. It’s hard to stay positive. They’re doing a stellar job of demeaning the objectors. Sorry to hear about your job. Brown needs to be hung for treason along with many others. We’re nextdoor with RINO brad little. He started with absolute stupidity last March but backed off when we put together a recall effort and now I see him biding his time trying to ensure he doesn’t become a 1 term wonder. Hopefully we can vote him out.
It’s smart to join forces with like-minded folk and bulk buying. Only united can we stand. Blessings to you and yours
Thank you
Amen!!
My employer made the mistake of announcing an expectation of a compliance mandate. That gave me 3 months to bank enough saving to ride out the insanity.
I’m still there. Celebrated a wonderful Christmas with blue sky and happy dogs. Zero spending.
My employee relationship is just Work-For-Hire now. No care, no allegiance, no trust (wasn’t much to start after working for 40 years).
You should consider the vacation in place plan until the bastards fire you.
Younger white Republican men are the demographic least likely to get the vaxx.
Your name says it all spuds, and on what evidence do you base that claim on? Like that dip sh 1t in the fake white house no body fact checks libs any more
I do wonder why you thought I think that’s a bad thing…
Hmmm, I keep hearing that it’s people with PhD’s. I think the largest demographic, percentage wise, of the “vax hesitant,” is minorities.
At one point there was a study with a graph showing lowest jab compliance at the blue-collar & less formal education end of the spectrum, and at the opposite amongst the highly educated. Everybody in the middle formed a bell curve up to the highest jab compliance.
This made sense to me, because the blue-collar end has solid real-world common-sense experience, including with the medical establishment, and the other end includes people like Drs. Malone and McCullough.
Dr. Malone and Dr. McCullough both took the jab, if I am not mistaken.
I don’t believe Dr. Malone would get the jab. He knows better and has stated so publicly.
He got vaccinated early on. He just told Joe Rogen. He also had a very bad reaction.
Not McCullough. He got the virus and has natural immunity. Malone did take the jabs, early on.
IIRC that was a study over time that showed the less-educated and minorities had the largest drop in vaccine hesitancy, but for PhDs there was essentially no change and they ended up higher than those with master’s degrees. But PhDs are only about 2% of the population. It did indicate that the less-educated are more susceptible to propaganda — the better-educated, once they decided against the vaxx, never changed their minds.
NYSlimes said recently that over 90% of Democrats got the poke but only about 60% of Republicans.
And CDC data indicates that the elderly are much more likely to get it than the working-age, and women slightly more than men. And within the last two weeks, whites are only about 45% of the newly-vaxxed.
Blacks and (barely) Hispanics have lower vax rates than whites, BUT they also have very small elderly populations relative to whites, especially Hispanics. Among the working-age, whites are least likely to be vaxxed.
Anecdotally, from what I see in comboxes, I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of young white Republican men think the vaxx will kill you.
Of course. It’s not like black folks are staying away from the EXPERIMENTAL vaccine, right? What you have done was called a hasty generalization in the logic portion of my sophomore geometry class. Do a bit of research.
Maybe you should learn not to make rash judgment calls. I did in fact think of that. Yes, blacks have low vax rates, definitely lower than Hispanics, Asians, and elderly whites, but they’re not as low as younger white Republican men. Which is what I said.
No, younger urban POCs are the least likely. The statistics that prove this, are very easy to locate.
Great prayer. I will add to this, based on something I heard from Bob Woodson about MLK’s concept of agape love – I pray that the Lord will turn the hearts of the wicked persecutors to righteousness, that they will realize the error of their ways, repent and sin against their brethren no more. In Jesus’s name, Amen.
Oh yes, Lord! Please make it so.
Build Back Better is coming. They are going to collapse the dollar and force everyone into one world currency in digital format. Your dollar bills will be hyperinflated out of existence. Klaus Schwab and crew already told us the “poor and minorities” would receive a higher payout benefit than whites.
Can you move to a free state like MT?
I know someone who is worth over 3 million with the real estate she owns, who got laid off from her job because of the shut-downs and then bragged about being able to bank $20K in savings from the money she got from Biden. I know another person whose 20-ish son refused to go back to work when things opened up and instead chose to stay home and become a marijuana addict. He said he was making more money from Biden’s pay outs than he would if he went back to work. She eventually kicked him out of the house.
East Central coastal state. Yesterday was what is called around here “check day”. Normally the bank lines are long, the post office has lines of people buying money orders to pay bills and to send to relatives, and all three grocery stores’ parking lots are full. That condition usually lasts for 2 days. Yesterday mid-morning, there was only 1 person other than me in the post office. Also yesterday mid-morning at Walmart, I saw nobody leaving with full to the top grocery carts in the hour I was there; most of the people in line and at the self-check were buying a very modest amount. This afternoon about 4 pm, one grocery parking lot had only 9 cars and there was nobody in line at my bank. It has given me the impression of people hunkered down, spreading out what they have, less than usual buying last month and sending fewer money orders.
instacart and Amazon
Or they’re dead…seen the all cause mortality rates from the insurance companies yet? Up 40% in the 18-64 yr old ranges.
Search this thread for the comments by sundance on that report. He had some interesting and logical caveats.
Yesterday, my son placed an online order with a local pizzeria and when I went to pick it up they told me that it wouldn’t be ready for another 20 minutes.
The manager apologized and said that they had just opened up the restaurant.
It was 3:00 pm and the sign on the door indicated that their normal hours of operation were from 11:00 am to 9:00 pm.
I asked about the late opening and she explained that they were “experimenting” with their hours of operation, because they never knew how many employees they would have from one day to the next.
My local pizza place was out of crust, a friends pizza place in a bigger city couldn’t get cheese, luckily he had another pizza place close by that sold him some of their extra cheese, so he could take orders and keep his employees working.
Probably normal now but $ 25 for 20 wings. My daughter is visiting otherwise would pass on this in the pizza order. $ 3.75 for any topping. Take out pizza has become a luxury meal.
I heard pies were $30 each on Ft Myers Beach if you could get them- friend closed his evening Pizza business he remodeled and added a yr ago to coffee / breakfast place – was killing it- can’t staff it
A Café here in town has reduced their hours to 8 AM ro 2 PM as they can’t find anybody to work the evening shift.
They are busy from opening to right up to closing.
Huddle in Perry, Florida? Stopped there a couple of weeks ago, and the cut in business hours left me slack jawed.
This is happening nationwide, and across many different kinds of workplaces.
A customer at the store where I work commented that we were staffed better than at any restaurant here in Naples, FL. High season right now, but the “Now Hiring” signs are still everywhere.
Here in Ontario restaurants are in lockdown again. I’m not sure how any will be able to recover from this!
I don’t hear anyone talking of trips or fun things they are doing. No new vehicle purchases. No big trips planned for the winter.
A sense of doom seems to be prevalent. These politicians know exactly how to strip a man of hope. Home prices are untouchable. All costs are through the roof. Life has descended into a survival mode. Just get through each day. No goals or aspirations for the future.
People have broken spirits. No other way to describe what I see and feel in the eyes around me.
DD
We can only hope this leads to a building of “cold rage” and that lame attempts to fawn this off, blaming Covid or “Trump and his white Nationalist insurrectionist supporters” will fall flat, as the education of the populace, continues.
Hard times call for, and bring out hard measures.
DD you are right- I’m in Delaware & the diapered faces i see ( well let’s just say I see their eyes) look devoid of hope or joy or purpose. They look like robots going through the motion of shopping. It is getting worse too- saw more double masked today. Very depressing. Store fairly busy- I counted maybe 8-10 unmasked like me. And stores don’t have mask signs up (yet again). After reading & watching Dr Malone’s talk that not only US but the world is going through “ mass formation psychosis “ of fear & anxiety- I truly believe this. A year ago I said this whole Covid plandemic is a big psyop.
The busiest place I’ve been lately was a gun show in Cave City Ky New Year’s Day. Line 200 deep at 9 am opening and they were spending money. Great show – much better than the RK shows in Louisville and Lexington. I picked up a Sig P365 lnib for $500 out the door. Kentucky is a free state – the governor is a pos but the vast majority of the people are salt of the earth when you get out of Lou/Lex.
Man. I’m so jealous! If I lived in the US my first purchase would be the Colt 1911.
DD
You have good taste! I have a Colt 1911 as well as a couple of Glocks and like them all. My all time favorite handgun is a S&W 5″ 5 screw N frame .357 revolver – some call it a pre model 27.
I’m stoked over my new Sig p365 – carry 13 rounds of 9mm in a pistol slightly larger than a S&W 5 round j frame revolver.
I am in Ontario as well, feel what is happening, disgusting. Our Premier seems to look good, doubt he is worried about the constant change of venues, I call them that. It truly is sad and depressing, as I saw Happy Days not that long ago. Watched the local news this evening, lo and behold Trudope in a black t-shirt getting his booster. You don’t want to know what I said to my TV seeing that ugly, evil mug. FJT!!
Hey. Wow. Nice to have another Ontario like minded person. I’m in the Niagara Region! Insane here. People are over the top stupid. There is no end to the absurdity!
Stay strong.
DD
Just south of Buffalo here. Southern tier 60% no mask anywhere. Buffalo 95% wearing.
Hang in there
D.D.
They bass turds are working hard at demoralizing us out in British Columbia.
It’s not working though..the resolve of the many is very encouraging.
We are slowly progressing.
That said, a significant number of folks will be irreparably damaged, both emotionally and financially.
However many are stronger.
Those that foresaw this two years ago are way ahead of the curve.
Others that were lazy, naive ,foolish or “ drank the kook aid” are hurting.
Tens of thousands here bought quality Real Estate, and other tangibles.
Several we know are sitting on 5 year fixed mortgages at approximately 1.5%
You will know how well our big 5 banks did in 2021.
Close to a 30% increase, and healthy tax preferred dividends.
Many of us are closer to the God of our understanding.
We will not surrender.
It is not an option!
My contempt for the “ powers that be” grows by the day.
They are cowards..our side are winners.
Cheers!
Northern end of South Florida…traffic out of control very heavy but not too many out of state plates, gas about 3.30 plus or minus, gas stations, Wally World, Publix and Target, Home Depot and Lowe’s, all crowded, even after these holidays…(sure did not feel like Christmas this year). Beaches also crowded. VEternarians, booked two weeks out at least. Same with dog groomers and ladies hair stylists.
We are seriously considering “ jumping in” and purchasing in Florida.
Or maybe just rent for a couple of 5 month spells.
We are property owners ourselves, both as homeowners and small time investors.
So are fairly familiar with “ the game”
Modest area, average PDJT supporting folks as neighbours
Suggestions?
When I’m out driving, if I don’t have one of my CDs or thumb drive of music I’ve recorded, I rarely listen to normal radio channels. 95% of the current music is garbage (rap in particular), and most of the “oldies” channels are hit-and-miss, to say the least. So we usually have the radio tuned to a local classical channel. Some of the stuff I really like, and most of the rest is at least decent background noise.
Why am I telling you this? Well, because once every couple hours that channels has a 5-minute news break, courtesy of the wonderful NPR. Generally I hit the OFF button as soon as it comes on, but today I didn’t. And the first story was about this. But get this… here’s what they concluded (paraphrasing): “Analysts believe that the fact that so many people are comfortable in quitting their jobs, means they have confidence that the economy is doing good and will only get better in the future.”
????!!!!!
jelloo333: NPR. Says it all.
Rose colored glasses
Is Atlas Shrugging?
Survey says…
All of the government data is suspect now, because it’s deliberately collected in such a way as to obfuscate.
How many are quits vs vax protest layoffs? How many workers are missing from the workforce because they “died suddenly”?
No call, no show… so obviously they quit. But they also didn’t file for unemployment. I wonder how much the social security rolls went up?
They must be estimating or more correctly, pulling it out of their arrse like fauci.
I run a business in Florida and there is NO requirrment to report quits or layoffs, only New Hires. Florida knows unemployment filings, but nothing about quits.
BTW, we were hit with a fake unemployment claim 8 mo ago using stolen SSN of an employee. It took 6 months to get it shut off and stopFlorida from increasing our premiums.
I don’t go out much but grocery stores seem very understaffed, demand for fast food quite low and my husband and I spent hours in home depot with hardly any other customers last week.
I had the pleasure of going to a ShopRite (Delaware) I rarely go to except when coming back from certain dr’s,etc. Well to my surprise there were no employee staffed checkout lanes!! Not one! This store in about a month turned it all into self checkout. This not good
Wife has worked at HD for 33 yrs – raises have been a joke for last decade plus 2-3% now they have given entire store $1 raise or 50 cents more than once – trying to keep up – they hired all help at $12 last few yrs now you can start at $16 anywhere in Sw Fla –
Lee county has been one of top employment markets last 5 yrs .
Most restaurants on FMB have serious labor shortage and food service is a struggle – all Starbucks down here have had to limit on line ordering and other things because of severe staff shortages (store with 12-15 associates had 3)
Was in Heidi’s in mid-December. Two people working the floor … and being run ragged the first two hours by the early birds.
One doesn’t have to have graduated from Sundance Maganomics 101 class, or even be “conservative” to figure out inflation isn’t transitory.
Hence, every purchase you consider, is a choice between “this or that” in a way it wouldn’t be, say a year or two ago, but thats offset by “its ONLY going to go UP, if I buy it later.
And millions are making such decisions, every day.
I know some here have posted taking “early retirement” that they wouldn’t have otherwise, as a responce to employer jab mandate, so even “job losses due to retirement” may not be so clear cut.
Brandons people have made the bed, and now WE are forced to lie in it, and its only going to get less comfortable, for the foreseeable future.
Are the majority now receiving welfare?
Pretty sure the majority has been for awhile now, atleast since Obama was the KING!
I was wondering that when someone mentioned young people who were staying home playing video games.
I immediately wondered, what home. No way I would have been allowed to sponge off my parents. And I got out of school in the last Stagflation years (Carter).
Sometimes the only option nowadays is you help the adult kids, or they end up dead on the street from starvation, or other issues which are prevalent today. (The adult kids can also help around the house, which is a bonus.) You can’t compare this modern environment to those Carter years, nice try though. When was the last time we had more than half our govt’ trying to undermine the American people (at every turn daily) amidst them just trying to survive? Don’t mention Carter either because these people are different animals on the Democrat side today by a magnitude of 100X worse.
What do I see? Larger employers are still abusing their employees with dumb ass kovid policies. Smaller employers have plenty of openings.
If you’re not a debt-slave, there is still plenty of freedom to be enjoyed.
The one factor I didn’t see mentioned was the Baby Boomers are leaving the workforce due to age and retiring. This is the largest demographic age group and the youngest of them will hit 65 in 2027. The oldest of them hit 65 in 2010. Even those that chose to continue working are probably leaving the workforce in large numbers now because of the COVID hassles and layoffs and age. This generation has had to reinvent their careers multiple times due to changing technology, foreign competition and the layoff fad that sweep corporate America starting in the 70’s. After a while people simply get tired of reinventing their careers and just quit doing it. Corporate America and the Government simply never accepted the reality that the Baby Boom was not followed by a Baby Boom Boom. Now Reality is starting to run them over.
Agree with you but I think a lot of the part time jobs are being filled by boomers, Not everyone had enough money to fully retire, bad decisions poor wages. it was no bed of roses working the last40+ years , Glad I no longer am in the cage..
Definitely what I have been seeing out on the road. It’s not just the occasional senior working at McDonalds anymore.
I had to start reinventing my career in the 90’s when I was in my mid to late 40’s. Hit the Social Security office the first day I was eligible for early retirement. I’m thankful I was in the job force in the 60’s thru 90’s. Job freedom was the word. If you didn’t like this job after a few years, go get another one. And I never had to apply for one by a computer.
I’m a retired Boomer. Your post prompted lots of memories, for which I thank you. Though I personally did not tire of having to reinvent my career through retraining, it was constantly necessary because of changing technology. When I started out taking X-rays it was on film, and patient charts were all paper. CT scanning and MRI machines hadn’t been invented. Nobody had a computer except the billing department of the hospital. That machine was the size of two refrigerators. Had to learn computers, digital imaging and electronic medical records on the job. Nothing I had learned in college still applied except the most low-tech skills like drawing blood, administering injections and taking vitals with a stethoscope.
The oldest Boomer is 76 this year and the youngest 58 they have been retiring for almost 2 decades now but are still retiring. Gen X is 41 to 57 so some of them that are government workers have started to retire the last few years.
Very young Boomer here (my Mum was a war baby), I totally get that. Because of some periods of unemployent, I can’t retire till 67, I’m finding it hard going. The sheer physical tenacity it takes to carry on going to work, for less and less pay (I’ve NEVER had a raise). In my country they just banned eating and drinking on trains. Typical work day for me (not every day), leave house at 6, coach plus train plus metro masked, get to big city at 9, masked, 6 hours teaching, classes of 35, masked, no going outside for non masking, banned in the street. Idem back home at about 10. When am I supposed to eat?
vaccine fired or not, everyone is looking for their next job and a pay bump to go with it. But if currently employed, they are being careful where they are going too. Phoenix AZ
In the NE of Buckeye State, businesses are begging for workers. All businesses from restaurant to manufacturing. Many restaurants, gas stations, close early (before (Xi-con aka Omnicron ) Because of being under staffed at many businesses the quality of service has dropped or some service has ceased. IMHO. Noticing empty shelves(again-still) and higher prices in the grocery stores. At Christmas time, Walmart and Target toy section was slim pickings. I am not sure even how many are affording feeding, gas and housing at this point. Can’t imagine in 6 months from now. I think we are lucky (so far) regarding winter heating because it has been a mild winter…so far anyway. Don’t see growth, such as houses being built. Housing market seems to have dropped off some here as well.
LGB!!!!
why would you set foot in Target?
Heh, yeah, Target is too rich for my old blood, I barely qualify for Buck and a Quarter Tree now.
However, looks like the spec real estate market has sprung up again in my tiny historical CA ‘berg. Building new houses right along the highway. Meanwhile, nothing existing is for sale. Total lockup. Count the listings on two hands on a good day.
Go to work, mask up? No thanks, I’ll stick to the fresh air and parallel economy. Was my own boss for nearly 40 years, no sense in changing now. Trump’s Art of the Deal was a godsend.
Cook County, IL (Chicago AND suburbs) just started mandating that people show proof of v@x in order to get into many indoor establishments (restaurants, gyms, museums, etc). Unbelievably, this is in effect for people as young as 5 years old! This is in addition to the statewide mask mandate, which has been in effect since late August.
Like your name, perfect for Chicago. If you just loot these places, you don’t need no stinking card.
I think I saw a report that IL was close to the top of the list of losing people who voted with their feet recently.
This is a purposeful ruining of the economy. Obama’s fingerprints are all over this.
Around here, nearly every retail/service business is short staffed. Every restaurant I’ve been to lately has long lines to get in, but when you’re seated you see that nearly all the tables are empty. There are only one or two wait staff to handle the entire restaurant. We’ve been trying to find a company to pick up our trash in an unincorporated area. Nobody is willing to add a new customer, so we’re taking everything to the dump ourselves. We have various home maintenance and improvement jobs we want to contract. We leave messages with various companies, but they never get returned. It’s unsettling.
Ditto.
One factor, looking for custom woodworking was this:
One millwork company was basically shut down because their key guy, the owner I think, had a stroke. They were still trying to figure out whether to try to stay in business, several weeks later.
All the others in the region, 4 to 5 months out for new customers.
Couple of odd job guys over the grapevine looked like a possibility, but twice I heard “he hasn’t been well. ”
Anecdotal I know, but hmmm.
Let me get this straight. Biden orders the illegal importation of millions of illegals. Mostly men of military age. None of them work. All are subsidized with housing, health care, cash, food, prostitution, drugs. Given driver’s licenses. Given Democrat registration cards. Given State voting registrations. None of them fill one job.
why work when you’re on Easy Street already?
siesta time, Amigo
4.5 million productive 20 per centers.
The Biden administration will blame the drop in productivity on a lack of material to produce the end product (ie. the COVID excuse).
The first two weeks to flatten the curve, okay. All the rest is on the government.
huh..
i drove from Vt to Boston and stayed in 3 higher end hotels. Each one was buzzing, people everywhere, spending money. Staffing was good enough especially in boston. Restaurants seemed to be very busy and our service was good. Did hear complaints that they needed more staff. We had to ask for housekeeping if we wanted it. Didn’t care. Biggest thing i noticed – rental cars were a mess – the cleaners/maintainers had all quit or wouldn’t show up. That was a first for me.
When you stayed in Boston didn’t you have to show proof of jab everywhere?
I am only a few towns away but will never darken their streets again.
Me too. Grew up 10 miles north, worked there as a kid cutting fish, Red Sox, Bruins fan, etc, etc. Now live in Central NH. Beginning to look like I’ve made my last trip to Beantown unless driving through on 93. Stupid sh**
I’m in the wholesale used vehicle business. Sunday I was purging files. I’m getting more money across the board in 2021 for the EXACT same vehicles with more miles that were sold in 2018/2019. My niche is A B cars, they get you from point A to point B. The 6995$ is the new 3995$
Yikes……
Used vehicle prices have doubled for no real reason, other than the used dealers all jacking up prices.
Which they have to do, to offset some risk in this Biden Sh!tfest of an economy.
One other thing I have noticed. A lot of well dressed non -English speaking, Biden foreign imports around. Really gets my blood pressure up!
Tamales for sale at church went from $15 a dozen to $20 a dozen from last month.
That’s it! Time to find another church! 🙂
Sundance writes, “Ex. if a worker needs a raise (immediate inflation driven), and the boss or organization is less responsive (structured pay raise schedule or performance review), the worker can get a faster pay raise by quitting their employer and going to work at a higher entry wage rate with another firm. If the job market is tight, the worker can make much more doing this. This is called job-jumping. In my opinion, this is a big factor right now.”
May I suggest annother dynamic, the “burn it all to the ground” dynamic.
People recognize the lie and its manifold manifestations ; they recognize that participating in the lies is not only self defeating, but immoral.
They want no part in supporting the great evil that claims it is their benefactor.
Rather, they have decided to forgo the narratives that are “the economy” and live according to the first principles of Christendom.
Some of us have been quietly implementing your suggestion for awhile now, on multiple fronts. Getting the Communists to engage boots on ground is tough though. They lob bombs from a distance. We’ll get it figured out though. They’re won’t be any winning on a sterile battlefield. It has to get ugly before it gets better. That’s just human nature with zealots.
Given historically very thin margins in many businesses, even in heavy industry my shop wasn’t rolling in it, I have to wonder who’s bankrolling this. All I can surmise is it’s a byproduct of debt-based business. Rack it up, walk away.
The American people should all just go on strike and demand the Govt’ end the Income tax and other high taxes hurting the American worker.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
I went out to eat with my family, 30 min wait, empty restaurant, staff shortage. Things running slow.
I went to Walmart today and it was depleted. First time I’ve seen grocery store shortage here in North Texas. But then I went Kroger and it was much better with occasional empty spots here and there. No bad, but not normal.
In Northeastern Wisconsin only Dunkin Donuts lets you sit and order inside as far as the fast food chains go. Have noticed several restaurants have lost the quality of their food and service. But the majority of the people don’t wear a face diaper. I can’t speak for other pharmacies, but Walgreens obviously fired a lot of people. They have closed their drive through and lines are thirty people on average. Costco is doing better so now I go there.
Yes, places I would go to now have some weird people working there. There was very nasty looking guy preparing my food, dude had no teeth and looked rough, as in… no hygiene. I picked up the food and threw it away. Too gross.
And he was weird, kept joking around in the most inappropriate way, he must have mental issues. I don’t trust someone like with my food.
Walmart is a leftist rag, that is deeply embedded with Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Warren Buffet and their whole crew of left leaning connected folks. The shortages they purposely produced worked wonders during Trump era to scare people into voting for Biden. You still hear the common leftist nut spewing about Trumps shortages, which were mass produced by a few large left leaning organizations to hurt his election chances. That is exactly why Walmart has more shortages, they are using the stores as a tool to steer people politically, just like Facebook, Google and Twitter do.
Only way you can do that is to not have much – irs will take it all if you don’t pay.
Go Galt and underground cash if you are able but if you get 1099s or W-2s you’d better report it.
You guys think you have it bad. I am visiting my son in Quebec, The whole province has a police enforced CURFEW, anyone outside even on their property pass 10pm is subject to arrest and a six thousand dollar fine! The whole province of 8 million people is complying like sheep and they have 200 people in hospital.
my dog’s can’t tell time and insist on a 3am potty break – guess I’d be an outlaw
Europe is having massive protests, and USA, and Canada sitting on the couch.
At some point protest is just a feel good action. Truckers striking? Now that will bring results fast.
Check out, TheHighWire.com, for some excellent Covid coverage and action being taken. There are protests and they are making a difference. These totalitarian Covid policies will NEVER stand! The word is spreading and many otherwise previously compliant people are waking up. Don’t despair.
Canada and its compliant citizenry have been a real eye opener for me. Double ditto for Australia…
My large employer lost several hundred to mandates in November.
Interestingly, they are looking at losing more than that to people quitting for other reasons.
Right now there are many job-jumping for better work hours or location, lots of early retirements, and a lot of people looking to try new things or just be a one income household because they aren’t happy where they are.
These are all six figure jobs.
I believe that a lot of people reassessed their lives and priorities during the lockdowns and remote work and have changed their outlook on how much they want to work, how long they want to work, and money as a priority.
When your gasoline costs double, (along with food and other costs) eventually you do something different, or you go bankrupt, especially when you drive a lot of miles to work. Money is a priority for everyone, being able to save it is a whole other situation, especially when Biden is picking your pocket 100 different ways.
Come to think of it, that was indeed one of my many reasons for early retirement (years before the CCPVirus). I’d almost forgotten it.
We used to go out to eat a lot before the CCPVirus but now have scaled back to maybe one or a couple times a month.
We also tend to do it in an exurban town further west in blueMA, where there are a couple of good family restaurants still surviving well, though some of their prices are substantially higher than the bargains they used to be.
Much more home cooking, which we both do pretty much from scratch, so we save that way. At this point grocery shopping for me often entails hitting 3 nearby stores and sometimes 1 in another town before I can get everything I need for any given dish. We hit grocery stores on almost every day trip in case I can find some “short” items.
Our fun is cheap – mostly watching old movies and playing bluegrass with the few precious friends willing to play live.
Not a prepper, and wouldn’t know how to begin, so if this blue area collapses, I’m in trouble. I do, however, have a fair amount of non-perishable everything stored up – lifelong habit. I never even had to hunt for toilet paper during that early 2020 phase…
Some commenters have talked about the the lack of work ethic except among older workers. I’m retired now and I have to say that has been happening for at least the last ten years now. That was my experience. However I have no doubt it has gotten even worse.
I loaded a half ton of bricks today by hand with a customer contractor who was half my age and I had him breathing hard and neither of us were wearing masks. Exhilarating! Work those fckers. They have no idea what we did when young working in industry, the beating, the danger. Heh.
Maybe he was breathing hard for other reasons?
I live down the street from a decent sized industrial park
in central .NJ.
there are so many help wanted signs in front of buildings
I don’t think you could walk 2 tenths of a mile without tripping over another one.
never seen nothing like it here
I’d rather lick the bottom of a bean can than work for a fascist corporation or pay one penny in taxes to a Communist government. Screw them. I expect they’re going to have to kill me to gain my compliance and I won’t go down easily, a century of Russian hate runs in my genes. Good luck!
Yeah that is the sticking point, why are we sending these commies our tax dollars, so they can use them to harm us and our families?
60,000+ city in Wisconsin. Blue collar, manufacturing, county seat, university, 2 hospitals .
The only place requiring masking are the hospitals and city buildings. Masks in schools become optional Jan. 15th.
Bars, restaurants, stores open no mask requirements except the local Kroger subsidiary has a sign up that most customers ignore. Lots of competition for groceries so they pushed it, people would buy elsewhere. Shortage of workers continues. Retail jobs go begging. Manufacturing working overtime, so far. Storm clouds on horizon. Home prices elevated. Gasoline is sub-$3 for regular 87 octane (10% ethanol); food prices accelerating fast. Sale papers have ground chuck at $2.99/lb; ground round $3.99/lb; ground sirloin $4.99/lb; New York Strip $7.99/lb.; ribeye $15.99/lb; ground turkey $4.99/lb. Eggs are $1.99/doz; whole milk $2.29 – 2.99/gal; medium cheddar chunk cheese $5.49-$6.99/lb.
Kraft Philadelphia cream cheese $5.79/1 lb.
Ruffles potato chips 8.5 oz/ $4.79; Nabisco Premium Saltine crackers $3.99/lb; Bananas $0.69/lb; Iceberg lettuce $1.99/1 head; Jello Instant Pudding $1.59/3.4 oz; C&H cane sugar $3.99/4 lb; Campbells Tomato Soup $1.49/10.75 oz can.
I quit 11 years ago.
I remember the day clearly. As I walked off that job site,
A friend of mine said, “See you at the playoffs”.
The Giants won their first World Series since 1954 that year.
I MAY go back to work this year, Well see.
The insurance tags are getting pretty high and business is down.
But I’m not walking on Q Deck, or humping pipe anymore.
Ill let the kids do that
Business in my area is way down for most people, when I say that I mean profitable business at the end of the day. You can still work, but you aren’t getting anywhere. Biden caught the tail end of Trumps policies which kept stuff afloat for a few months. Now we are in deep Democrat territory economy wise and it is a train wreck across the board.
The killing of America, the lie of covid and the stupidity of people. Hell of a title for book.
When NIH and CDC deny/ignore natural immunity and/or monoclonal antibody treatments in determining who is immune, we have issues.
Furthermore, calling this shot a “vaccine” when 2x vaxed and 1x boosted still get it, causes even more confusion/chaos. Call it what you will but it is not a vaccine.
Both NIH and CDC are far out of their lanes these days and have far too much influence/power.
Need some downsizing and retooling on these agencies.
I’m ready to walk out on my job and it isn’t due to the mandates, just bad management. I’ve been doing the jobs of three people for the last two months and haven’t gotten a temporary increase in pay, just a are you doing ok. That really puts bread on my table, especially in this time of rising inflation. Meanwhile other people in my agency make way more money than I do for less responsibility. Unfortunately I’m not old enough to retire so I need a job, just not the one I have.
This is what happened in 1930 and 1931, as the stock market crash developed into the Great Depression. The situation is worsened by the effects of two years of plandemic panic porn, to which a new frenetic iteration of “we’re all gonna die” is being added on account of the common cold (oops, omicron variant). The regime is pushing jab mandates in order to generate mass unemployment and shut down as many sectors of the economy as possible, aiming for a nationwide lockdown, this time for a lot longer than two weeks, by the spring. This will necessitate government takeover of moribund sectors of the economy, massive money-printing which will of course bring on Weimar- and Zimbabwe-type hyperinflation and a state of emergency, the case for which may be bolstered by sending the anarchists, communists and black supremacists into the streets again for another round of riots. This would provide a pretext for postponing the midterm elections that are increasingly looking like an apocalypse for the party of satanism, socialism and sodomy or the universal adoption of mail-in voting, for which the trucks and suitcases are still there to fill up with fraudulent democrat ballots to deliver in the dead of night on November 8. Poopy Pants, The Round-heeled Mongrel and their Chicom and globalist handlers are not going to stop the imposition of the Great Reset and the completion of the Great Replacement unless the people rise up and stop them.
Here in the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis, the restaurants least impacted by the labor shortage are the ethnic restaurants that are staffed primarily with immigrants and second-generation Americans.
Most of these restaurants are still fully staffed. One of the Mexican restaurants by me has even increased their hours during the pandemic.
Some of these ethnic restaurants, while fully staffed, are having difficulty finding staff proficient in English. The same Mexican restaurant that I mentioned above now has kitchen runners who don’t speak any English at all when previously they had English speakers in this role.
Mexican restaurants are the most numerous ethnic restaurants in this area, but there are also Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai restaurants that are also similarly still fully staffed.
The restaurants that are staffed primarily by non-immigrant labor are the ones most likely to be experiencing staffing problems, but I’ve noticed that staffing problems tend to coincide with how strictly a particular restaurant has complied with Governor Pritzker’s covid mandates.
The restaurants that shut down their dining rooms and enforced masks on their customers have fared the worst.
The ones who did not shut down their dining rooms, or reopened them before the end of the lockdown have done much better.
The restaurants that don’t enforce masks on their customers, which at this point is virtually all of them, have done much better than the ones who are mask nazis. The ones who don’t enforce masks on their employees have done the best.
None of the municipalities or counties in this part of the state are enforcing the state covid mandates. Any business around here enforcing masks is doing so solely because they actually want to.
The nicer hotels around me have continued to draw guests while the marginal hotels appear to be struggling.
The Pere Marquette State Park Lodge is an exception as it’s a nicer hotel that is struggling to attract workers, which is likely due to its remote location.
They appear to still be drawing the same amount of customers.
I’ve always been a fan of Pere Maquette Lodge’s beautiful national park caliber rustic architecture and location in a large, beautiful state park.
I stayed there in October to enjoy the fall colors and weather in the park. They were clearly short staffed on housekeeping as the lodge was dirtier than normal.
The restaurant still had great food, but it took over an hour to receive a simple hamburger. There were only three servers to serve a full dining room. I overheard a server telling a customer that they only had 25% of their staff and were forced to cancel their legendary Thanksgiving feast because of that.
Most non-food service and lodging businesses around me have been able to maintain adequate staffing.