America currently has a record 9 million jobs available.

The bad news, employers are having a very difficult time finding people willing to work.

This has become such a serious problem that companies are now offering $ 1,000 signing bonuses, retention bonuses and other incentives to entice prospective employees to come back to work.

A former long-time business owner shared with me last night that several local iconic restaurants were closed last night because they didn’t have enough cooks and other staff to open.

I want to protect their identities … but, these are iconic local owned restaurants that have been opened for last 50-100 years.

This is unprecedented and it must end, or, long-time, we’ll established successful businesses will be destroyed.

Although President Joe Biden denies it, there is no doubt that the extended, unconditional unemployment benefits are at the root cause.

In fact, in the 22 states that have ended the enhanced benefits, employees are returning back to work.

Here’s an example about what’s presently going on in other sectors (from a CNBC report).

With airport travel taking off at the same time the ability to find enough workers is stuck in a holding pattern, both the TSA and terminal restaurants are offering bonuses to lure more employees.

The Transportation Security Administration is trying to add 6,000 screeners by then end of September, and as part of that effort is offering $1,000 hiring bonuses, CNBC reports. About 4,000 screeners have been hired so far, according to a TSA spokeswoman.

Travelers at airports in Austin, Texas; Myrtle Beach, S.C.; and Charlotte, N.C., have been told to arrive up to three hours early recently because of the long lines in security, according to CNBC.

Airlines were given $54 billion in federal aid to avoid laying off workers in the early months of the pandemic when travel was severely impacted, but now many of them are in a frenzy to hire people to run their phone lines for reservations and other areas. The airlines cut staff to save money as the pandemic wore on.

But as vaccines freed up people to travel again, demand has outpaced the ability to replace those workers. Many of the new job gains have come from the leisure and hospitality industry, making it even harder for airport restaurants to find staff, where they must go through a federal security check that can take more than two weeks.

"Airports, even in normal times, have tremendous difficulty getting people to want to come to the airport to work," Earl Heffintrayer, senior airport analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, told CNBC.

Some airport employers believe the need for childcare or the enhanced unemployment benefits being paid have kept some people from applying for jobs.

The need for workers is so bad, that some airports are pushing for rules against concessionaires poaching the employees of their competitors.

"As you know, we are experiencing one of the greatest hiring challenges in the history of DFW Airport," Ken Buchanan, executive vice president of revenue management and customer experience, wrote to Dallas-Fort Worth concessionaires in a May 27 letter. "As we prepare for a busy summer, please continue to practice DFW Airport’s high standards of hiring operations and refrain from soliciting employees from other DFW operations."

 

Disney World is also offering $ 1,000 signing bonuses.

They are not alone. Almost every industry is having the same problem at the same time.

Just like our supply chain is broken in America … so is the American workforce.

We simply cannot continue to provide rich, taxpayer funded enhanced benefits to able-bodied Americans, who are simply unwilling to work because direct deposit cash arrives each month with no effort required.

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