I think the tone here is that skilled meat handlers are hard to find because they all went off to work in Amazon warehouses where the pay is better and the working conditions are more tolerable.
Hard to believe that’s true. And, if it is true, the fix is pretty obvious.
Butchery is a genuine skill. It’s not some minimum wage thing — “Here’s a cleaver, start hacking away at that carcass and do the best you can.” These are, in fact, skilled workers who know how to handle a knife and know health regulations. You need to pay for that.
The guy is in Illinois, so the problem for him may be that skilled butcher’s left the state because of its income tax.
We’ll get a play-by-play for every industry as to why their particular prices are rising, and they’ll blames workers (us) - but the fact is that the DOLLAR IS FALLING (so everything has “sticker shock”).
Time to pay the piper for all that free money given away by the gubmint...