Changed by pandemic, many workers won't return to old jobs

Mullins’ unemployment checks don’t match what he was making at his Oak Harbor, Washington bar, but they’re enough to get by while he looks for jobs that would provide health care and retirement benefits.

Good. Its time that all jobs start to provide those things, although ideally it is the job of the gov.

“As long as I’m making enough money that I can support myself, the people that I love and I can get to travel every once in a while, I’m good,” said Henderson. “I think this job will afford me the opportunities to do that.”

That's a lot better than most foreigners get in Japan.

I know a lot of people in "good" jobs with good benefits having the same thoughts.

Happy to live in a country where one gets standard benefits as a must for every job.

It is not Japan unfortunately.

But without a college degree, she felt she had limited options.

I don't know why people have this mindset. You don't need a college dregree to be rich!

Sorry folks, not everyone is going to be a computer programmer or doctore. There are jobs available that pay decent wages, but not everyone will get 25 bucks an hour plus benefits. It just isnt realistic. A lot of jobs simply dont provide that much value.

Employers who want workers in a competitive job market need to do what is necessary to entice workers to return. Increasing wages and benefits, or profit sharing, or improving work-life balance, will lure workers back to their jobs.

Mullins’ unemployment checks don’t match what he was making at his Oak Harbor, Washington bar, but they’re enough to get by while he looks for jobs that would provide health care and retirement benefits.

All changes come with good and bad things, this is just another example, if this crisis give the chance to some people to take a step back and find something more productive to do as a job they should take it, Hopefully companies that depend on overworking their employees for peanuts will have much more pressure to change.

I hope Biden will address this but past presidents have failed.

Democratic administrations going back to Harry Truman have advocated for some form of universal health care for the US but Republicans and some of the most conservative Democrats remain steadfastly opposed. There are large elements within the Republican Party that oppose Medicare and Social Security, considering them somehow "socialist". The US is so enamored of the "free market" that it is often blind to its many shortcomings. As long as something is privately owned, it's "good" while anything done by any facet of government is naturally and automatically "bad". I think about the most anyone can expect out of the current administration is to repair some of the damage done to the ACA by Republicans over the past six years or so. Some state governments will never fully adopt its provisions sadly.

I don't know why people have this mindset. You don't need a college dregree to be rich!

There are exceptions to every rule, but statistically those who lack at least a bachelors degree from an accredited university are twice as likely to be unemployed and have lifetime earnings of less than half of someone who has a bachelors degree. The occasions where people have beat those odds are few and notable. However they are comparatively rare. Most people who do not get a college degree are not going to get rich. Most will suffer with low incomes, poor to no benefits and more frequent and longer periods of unemployment.

Apparently the US federal government's unemployment top-up is causing stagflation

No. Were you even alive during the Nixon years to know what real stagflation was? Double digit inflation with stagnant GDP growth. The US does not have that today. The US is experiencing much higher than average GDP growth.

The current inflationary pressures are temporary. Globally and in the US the longer term trends are deflationary. The velocity of money, the measure of how often a dollar in circulation changes hands, continues to trend downward and after spiking from intermittent stimuli, the long term trend in money supply growth is also downward. Banks aren't lending. Consumers are paying down debt. Those trends counteract money supply growth prompted by periodic stimulus payments and continue long after the stimulus is used up. Corporations in the US are sitting on something like $1.8 to $2 Trillion in unspent cash balances. That is a huge amount of money just sitting there. Likewise the wealthiest Americans became a lot wealthier during the pandemic and their money is not circulating in the economy generating business and increasing the GDP. These trends pre date the pandemic and have not been altered by it.