Enhanced unemployment benefits blamed by restaurant owners for worker shortage
Experts and industry insiders cite a variety or reasons for a general reluctance to return to work, but Hall-Jones put the blame squarely on enhanced unemployment benefits. We fought hard to get through COVID, but COVID didn t kill us, the stimulus did, he said.
Early in the pandemic, an extra $600 was added to weekly unemployment checks. While that figure is now $300, some workers can still make more staying at home and accepting jobless benefits than they could working a restaurant job.
Numerous restaurateurs echo Hall-Jones’ thoughts on this issue, but surveys and interviews with out-of-work cooks, servers and bartenders paint a more complicated picture.