The so-called labor shortage marks a fascinating collective change in consciousness in the body politic itself. The argument is that a large portion of labor is still living on the proceeds of pandemic aid - which lets be clear, was paltry in the US - and now there aren't enough people looking to return to low wage, higher risk jobs, as there is still consternation about whether the pandemic is over, and for good reasons of their own. This is a simplified version what's happening of course, but you do see various forms of the argument coming up frequently with much hand wringing.
Here we have decades of attrition and processes of runaway economic warfare and disintegration, which helped produce the pandemic and its general effects in the first place, which, included within are the collective responses to that crisis, which produced subsequent crises of their own. And now, after this massive traumatic event, many are struck on the individual level with a deeply personal and emotional notion that all this is bullshit, something is terribly wrong. In so many words, "I don't want to do this anymore" about sums it up. The reactionaries once again seek out the whip of hunger: remove the unemployment bennies! And labor digs in its heels, and the wheels of commerce wobble and shudder under the building friction.
