The locals are not able to hire because the extended unemployment benefits amount to $637 a week per person, more than they can make working at $15 an hour. What is more amble benefits are included in unemployment. This will continue to at least September.
Add to this the stimulus was WAAAY too lush. This whole covidcation has been a boon to working people. The stimulus is more money than they have had in their lives. There are no used goods to be had. Boats, cars, motorcycles, four-wheelers etc. all bought up. Anything within that stimulus payment is pretty much gone. Pawn stores are not being restocked, the contrary, they are being emptied.
The day of the first stimulus payment the local lumber supplier parking lot was packed. Trailers and truck loads of stuff for small repair and other projects leaving the store like a land run. All loads of $2,400 or so, sometimes more not forgetting the stimulus was per person, not just per tax paying adult. Geez! I should have seen the trouble starting then but never expected the stimulus and unemployment payments to go on and on as they have.
Add to this the stimulus was WAAAY too lush. This whole covidcation has been a boon to working people. The stimulus is more money than they have had in their lives.
Bingo!
It's good to see someone who understands the situation.
I'm a landowner with a lot of timber and you pretty much can't give away pine timber right now, the prices are really, really low. Meanwhile lumber prices are through the roof. The bottleneck is in the sawmills, the laborers that would normally work the mills are sitting at home making more money than they've ever made in their life drawing extended umemployment benefits and stimulus checks. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that if you pay someone more money not to work then they'll choose that over punching a timeclock, it's just an extension of the welfare state we've seen over the last 50 years.
It's easy to say "just pay them more" but it's not really that simple, businesses don't reorganize around bubble times, that's a recipe for bankruptcy when things crash.