The Daily - Stories From the Great American Labor Shortage

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

This episode contains strong language. Bartenders, sous chefs, wait staff — at the moment, managers in the U.S. hospitality industry are struggling to fill a range of roles at their establishments.Managers blame pandemic unemployment benefits for the dearth of talent. Employees say that the pandemic has opened their eyes to the realities of work.We spoke to workers and managers about why it has become so hard to get some staff back to work.Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Why is it so hard to hire right now? Experts weigh in on what’s going on in the labor market — and what companies can do to attract workers.The sharp rebound in hiring, especially in service industries, is widening opportunities and prompting employers to compete on pay.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. After laying off millions of workers at the start of the pandemic, companies across the service industry now face a very different kind of employment crisis. The pandemic has left the country facing a labor shortage, with the retail and restaurant sectors leading the way. A crippling shortage of workers. And some businesses are having trouble hiring enough workers to reopen fully. Today.

For the mom and pop shops just starting to reopen, they're facing a smaller labor pool than ever before. How exactly did that happen? What's driving workers away? My colleagues spoke to the businesses scrambling to find workers and to the workers unwilling to return to those jobs. It's Tuesday, August 3rd. Hello, hello.

This is Sydney Harper, producer with The Daily here in D.C. This is Claire Tennesketter. I am on Smith Street in Brooklyn. Walking up and down 18th Street in the nation's capital. 18th Street is a big hill. Challenged. Breathing hard. Breathing breathing hard, breathing hard. Breathing hard.

Hi. Hi, how are you? Hi, I'm a producer with the New York Times, a daily news podcast. We're trying to do an episode looking at businesses and local restaurants hiring people and if they're having trouble finding people. Can I get your name and, like, your role here? Dave Delaplane, general manager. My name is Vanessa and I'm the manager here at Xochitl Taqueria. My name is Jonathan. This is my family's restaurant. I am Daniel from Savelli Restaurant in Brooklyn. I'm Simona. I'm a manager at Mama Capri. How big was your staff

pre-pandemic and how big is it now? So in February, I believe we had about 13 employees. Now it's six of us. Pre-pandemic, we had a staff close to 50. Wow. What are you at now? I have 30 now, I'd say. So you're actively hiring then right now? Always. It's been so extremely difficult trying to find employees. Hiring is something crazy right now. Finding waitstaff. Servers. Bartenders. And the kitchen probably is the hardest. Busboy, runner. Sous chef. Pizza guy. Experienced grill cook. Line cook. Line cook. Line cook. Dishwashers. Sometimes I clean the dish myself. I've even had to like do the kitchen. I've had to do deliveries. I was cooking in the kitchen last week. I have a huge

burn on the bottom of my leg. Wow. Yeah, I can see it. Are you okay? I'm okay, but it tells you that I shouldn't be working in the kitchen most likely. We'll take anybody and we're willing to work with them and train them. We get down on our knees and we beg. But we can't even get that. Where do you think everyone went? What do you think is happening? Everyone is getting free money, sitting at home. That's all the reason is. It's very clear. The government is just giving out so much help. You know, they're basically making more money to stay home.

If I was getting $600 a week, I would not be going to work either. I would be chilling out with my money. This unemployment, it makes people more lazy. People rather stay home and watch TV than go back to work. Hey Shannon, nice to meet you. I'm Diana with the New York Times. How's it going? It's going good, and you?

Good. So I would love to just know more about you if you want to introduce yourself and what you do. My name is Shannon Toon. I am 41 years old and I am the chef owner of Kraft Burger. We are a gourmet burger restaurant in Houston, Texas. I also own a catering company called Dining with the Toons. I guess, can you just tell me a little bit about what hiring has been like? Do you have a lot of positions open? What is that like right now? So as of right now, I am currently fully staffed, but it has taken some time to get there. And we've had to adjust a lot from what we used to be able to do. Like before I would post a position and I would get a hundred applicants easily. Now I post the position and I might only get one or two applicants.

Wow. And then I'm lucky if they show up for the interview. A lot of times they don't. Yeah. I mean, what, what positions were the most difficult to fill for you all of them um quite frankly like finding cooks i had never seen it like this before in my entire career i've been doing this for over 25 years and i have never seen it so hard to find cooks the issue that I am seeing is that, you know, a cook with even minimal experience wants top dollar pay. I was paying cooks pre-pandemic with some experience, like, you know, an entry-level visit was like 12 bucks. You know, my experience, people got 15 or more. And now I've had people ask for $20 an hour. And we are a burger restaurant. $20 an hour to flip burgers is ridiculous. I mean, what are the ways that you've tried to entice people to

stay and to show up? I haven't really done anything to entice people because I'm not a big corporate restaurant. I don't have all this funding and backing to where I can offer people, you know, $500 for interviewing or for taking a job. I can't do that. What I have done is that once I get a good candidate, I don't wait. If somebody is qualified in front of me, I hire them right then and there because everyone is hiring right now. And then when it comes to wages, I've come to understand that, hey, I'm just going to pay more for labor. As long as it's not ridiculous, I will just offer and agree to it. What do you think this moment means for the economy at large and for restaurants specifically? One of the things that I see a lot

that I don't think is useful and I don't think it's smart is a lot of restaurants, they're almost like calling people lazy. You know what I'm saying? Because they don't want to work or because they're getting unemployment. And I think that's bad

because a lot of people have valid reasons for not working. You know, if you're at risk, we're still in a pandemic. It's not over. You know, so I understand that part. Yeah. I also understand the part if I make more money on unemployment than I do working, maybe I wouldn't work either. You know what I'm saying? I understand that part of it too. So I just think that this is a time where the industry has to make an adjustment.

You know, I worked for luxury hotels for almost 20 years before I started my own business. And one of the things there that I could not stand was that, like, they paid the hourly employees so low. I made $10 an hour when I was a hotel cook. And then 15, 20 years later, that was still the wave. And you know what I'm saying? And it was like, there was a need for a correction. And I get that part. But also the other flip side of that is that,

I think one thing that the pandemic taught a lot of restaurant owners is that your margins are not okay. We can't get by on 10 to 15% profit anymore. We have to increase our prices and we have to educate our customers that that is part of the process. Because you have to pay people more? Yes. I mean, everything costs more. Labor costs more now. Food is costing more now. I just recently did a new menu change. I had to up my prices 13% across the board to pay for my increase in labor and my increase in food costs.

Hey, this is Robert Jimison from the New York Times. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you fine. Can you hear me? Yeah, no problem. Great. Can you just tell me a little bit about your resort? Just like help me as someone who's never been to that area.

Just help me understand. My name is Colin Davis and my wife and I own Chico Hot Springs Resort in Prey, Montana, 30 miles north of Yellowstone National Park in Paradise Valley. It's a huge river valley. It's really well known for trout fishing. We are 120 years old, always been family-owned, a lot of freestanding lodges and small cabins. And we have a fine dining restaurant and we have a saloon that serves lunch and dinner, you know, burgers and then a poolside family grill that also serves some lunch and dinner. How many people did you employ before the pandemic? What

was a normal staff like? 180. 180. How many at the lowest point in the pandemic, how many did you have on your staff? 15. Oh, wow. And where are you today? 130. I had to lay off 150 people, which was, they're all friends. I know every one of them. I know their wives' or husbands' names. I know their kids' names. We all, you know, we're close and it's a rural area. So you know what everybody does and doesn't do. But to lay off 150 people, we had to close for three months entirely. I mean, this property has never even had a lock, literally doesn't have a lock on the front doors of the lobby.

It was the first time ever that the doors have been locked. We had to bolt them shut. And then having to close and open and, you know, eating inside and outside and operating at 50% capacity. And then the tenor of our guests, everybody had a political issue to share with you, whether it was for or against masking. And I had a guest actually spit, like literally spit on a bartender because she wouldn't serve him because he's not supposed to approach the bar and wasn't wearing a mask. And then our staff, 10 to 15% of them got COVID, including myself. So it's been a hard go of it regardless, but we all thought we'd come out into a really quite a boom season. You

know, the stats from Yellowstone National Park pointed to probably the best financial year we would have ever had, you know, was like, wow, we're going to come back. We're rolling out of this and we're just going to crush it. You know, and we needed to, right? We needed, everybody needed a win. And then we phased into this labor crisis. It's honestly more stressful and harder to manage than COVID was. I'll go bus tables and the grill.

I'll help in the morning. I've stripped beds. I've pulled a dish shift every Saturday morning in the main dining room for the last two months. My wife is now hosting in our dining room. I'm in my daughter's home from college in Boston. She works in the garden in the day and the grill at night. It's just, it's all hands on deck. There's 20 rooms a night I can't rent because I can't keep them clean.

That's 600 rooms a month. That's a phenomenal amount of money. And that's hurtness. For the people that didn't come back when you called and said, hey, we're bringing folks back, what did people say when they said, you know, I'm moving on to something else or I'm not coming back to work? You know, most of them were sort of embarrassed. They wouldn't return our calls, essentially, you know. We actually offered some of our key people to stay during when we went down to 15 people.

And we had employees that still chose to take the unemployment and not stay on which i thought was just unbelievable i mean i just really surprised that um that they would follow that path it just i don't know these are hard-working people but they just saw an opportunity to and they knew that they would get an offer when it all started again. So it's just, which to me is just disgusting. I'm sorry, but I'm, I mean, I'm old school. I'm, I'm a dinosaur, you know, I'm like, you know, work hard and good things come to you. Right. So I don't know.

I just, you know, when did everyone get so lazy? I mean, nothing is going to come to you if you don't work for it. Right. Everyone gets so lazy. I mean, nothing is going to come to you if you don't work for it, right? If you don't contribute. And I feel like now more than ever, everybody needs to, it's more than just their own specific situation. I feel like it's going to have a pretty large demoralizing impact on the entire economy. Are you thinking about this as a short term problem or do you think this will be a long-term issue? I think it's a long-term issue. I think it's going to take a long, long time to rebuild it. I just don't know how all these, in every industry, how all this is going to get populated. Where are these 14 million Americans? Where are all these people that are not working at the restaurants that are closed or the shops that are closed.

You have to ask yourself, how sustainable is this? Getting less revenue and then also working at this pace, working six, seven days a week, you know, half those days are double shifts to fill in or just to be there for morale reasons. That's freaking brutal. Well, Colin, this has been, first of all, thank you so much for finding time to chat with me. And what I can only imagine is another busy day and a string of busy days. So thank you so much for finding time to chat with me. And what I can only imagine is another busy day and a string of busy days. So thank you so much for that. You bet. I hope you have a great rest of your day. All right.

I will. You too. All right. Bye-bye. Good talking to you. Be safe. We'll be right back. Test 1-2-3.

Hello, this is Adam. Hi, Adam. This is Lindsay with The New York Times. How are you? Hi, Lindsay. Nice to talk to you. I'm doing great today. What's up? Hello.

Hi, is this Kelly? Yes. Hey, Kelly, this is Robert Jimison from The New York Times. Hi, how are you doing? I'm good. How are you? Yeah, so how much time do you have? Just curious.

As much time as you need. Whatever I can do to help or whatever questions I can answer. Don't worry about it. Hello. Hi, this is Caleb. This is. Hey, Caleb. It's Diana.

Is it still an okay time for you to talk? Absolutely. Just to start, can you introduce yourself? Tell me your name and your age and where you live in the U.S. Sure. My name is Caleb Orth, and I am 35. I am pretty new to Chicago, and I just moved here at the beginning of June. I've worked in kitchens since I was 19. I didn't go to college. I went to culinary school. I wanted to be a chef. And I really tried to make that happen throughout my 20s and early 30s. And I got really far.

My last job that I had before the pandemic was in Portland, Oregon at a seasonal, highly acclaimed sort of American Italian restaurant. It was the kind of place that had the sort of prestige, but it was by no means a dream job. Working in the back of the house in a restaurant, especially a restaurant like that, of that caliber, is more than a full-time pursuit. It is a complete lifestyle.

So when I say that I worked there, what I mean by that is I worked there 80 hours a week. I worked there from 1130 in the morning until one o'clock in the morning, most days. So that's very unsustainable to me, just the culture of the work itself. You don't eat meals at appropriate times. You're always standing. You're working so hard. I would usually work a shift at this restaurant nearby. Working in a kitchen where we're like regularly 80, 90 degrees, sometimes even 100, being right next to ovens and heaters and grills and fryers.

You know, waiting table jobs can also be very kind of psychologically damaging in some ways right next to ovens and heaters and grills and fryers. You know, waiting tables jobs can also be very kind of psychologically damaging in some ways because you have interactions with people who don't respect you. It would be horrible. We would be soaked in sweat. And then Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would sub in for like a barista shift. Standing for eight hours and just five minutes to sit down and eat something quick. You know, you have to learn to perform at a level

that's like essentially flawless. Basically living paycheck to paycheck. I was depressed. It can be very overwhelming. Like we're constantly overworked.

There's a lot of multitasking. Underpaid. Remembering stuff. Underappreciated. There's a lot of pressure. You know, like dropping the meat and the chicken. So, you know, underappreciated. There's a lot of pressure, you know, like dropping the meat and the chicken. So, you know, there's oil everywhere.

When you put the meat down, sometimes oil drips down. So for a very long time, I had a lot of burns and scars in my hands. I still have some scars. I don't think they'll go away. It sucked. It really sucked. away. It sucked. It really sucked. My last day of work was March 15th,

2020. The night before, we had a very, very slow service, and I remember talking with one of the other guys that was in kitchen management, and I just said, hey, tomorrow I might be a little late because I'm going to go to the store and I'm going to stock up on,

you know, supplies in case this gets bad. And so when I was at the grocery store the next day buying food and stuff, you know, with everybody else in the city, I got called and they said, you know, we're closed indefinitely. We don't know what's going to happen. You know, everybody still has a job right now.

But we don't know how long this is going to last. And we got an email, you know, about five days later, basically laying off the entirety of the staff. My name is Katia Barmoetina. I'm 25. I am a musician, teacher. I live in Brooklyn in Bed-Stuy. And I grew up here too. So yeah, that's me. Tell me about unemployment. Did you start applying right away? I didn't apply right away because I thought, you know, I have money, I have savings.

And then two months later, when I had like maybe one month's rent, I was like, no, we got to do it now. We have to apply. This is a bad situation now. Once unemployment started to come in, do you remember how much you were getting a week at first? After taxes, I think it was like a good $600, $700 a week.

So very, very decent. It was great. I loved napping and having money come in. I was able to rediscover and discover things that I never really did for myself. I never took a moment to just take a walk. Be with my thoughts. Read in the morning. I'm reading Immodest Acts, which is

a book about lesbian nuns in the Renaissance. I was able to really think about the kind of relationships I want to have. Buying organic. I invested in a cat for my mental health. You know, some of those rich, bougie things that I wasn't able to do. And then I start teaching around noon. So I have one or two students from 12 to 1. Sometimes I take a nap in the middle of the day if I don't have anything between like 1 to 3. I take a two-hour nap. It's amazing. Thankfully, unemployment. Thank you, government. About how many hours a week would you say you're working now? Honestly, just teaching wise, I'm working like 12 hours a week. Do you see any scenario in which you go back? No, absolutely not. No, 100% no. In the initial period of the beginning of COVID, the spring of 2020,

we all filed for unemployment. And unemployment at that time was more than fair. The money from the federal government at that time was $600 a week. And that's on top of the amount that your state would give you, whichever state that you're in. So for a while, I made considerably more on unemployment than I did working. And I just told you how hard that I worked. So I really thought like, well, this is a good chance for me to just sort of take a rest. I know that I want to go work in a different restaurant. My girlfriend and I were seriously considering a move to New York City. And I had a line on a restaurant job

there at a restaurant that I really like and admire. And I was going to try to go work there. And then the thing that happened for me is that I started to notice how well rested I was. I started to notice how well rested I was. The bags that were under my eyes forever, for years, went away. My feet stopped hurting, and I never had really thought about how much my feet hurt all the time. But they did. My back stopped hurting. I was going to bed at a reasonable hour and waking at a reasonable hour rather than going to bed at like four in the morning and waking up at 11 a.m. And I was

eating healthy and exercising. My girlfriend and I were going on daily bike rides at the time all over the city. We were going out and seeing places that we'd never seen before. Granted, you know, everything was closed, but it was spring, you know, Oregon is beautiful in the spring. And there were all these things that, you know, that I never, ever had time to experience. I also got really into cooking at home because I really do love to experience. I also got really into cooking at home because I really do love to cook. It was a hobby of mine before it was my job.

You know, there's this adage that my dad used to say to me and my grandpa used to say to me too, that you should take what you love to do and make it your job, you know? So you get to do that all the time, right? And that'll make you happy. But I actually, I actually 100% disagree with that now. I think that if you take your hobby and you make it into your job, your job being something that you have to do every day, whether you want to or not, that you end up hating your hobby.

I know that's true for me. There were lots of days where I had to go into work and I'd just be like, I really don't want to do this. I'd be thinking about it and I'd be like, I really don't want to have to make this food again. I'm so tired of making this food. Somebody else's food, the same thing over and over and over. So during COVID, I'd be making meals at home and I got really into it. I'd make like, you know, the best version of some kind of takeout that I could make. So like stuff that we couldn't get, right? Like a full on Indian meal or something with naan and a bunch of different

curries or, you know, like a full-on sort of Middle Eastern meal with falafel and all kinds of little metse looking things or, you know, tacos from scratch, homemade tortillas, homemade pizza. And that was really fun for me and I sort of got to reconnect with this thing that I really do like doing. And I just started to think that this is how I'd like to live. I'd like to feel rested and well like this all the time, not have this just be some kind of little vacation, you know? And so I started thinking like, well, why am I really doing this? Is this really serving me or is it just serving, you know, whoever my employer is? And the easy answer to that question is it isn't serving me. It's serving whatever my employer is.

Hands down, you know, for all of my twenties and the first three years of my thirties, I worked in the service of someone else. And I was making $3,000 a month, maybe $3,200 a month. So it was enough for me to live, no doubt. But you got to bear in mind that that was for 80 hours a week. And so I don't want to have to live like that anymore. I want to have my work be my work and have it be something that I punch in for. And I do for a set amount of hours during the day and then I punch out of it and I go home and I don't have to think about it.

Hello? Hey, good morning. This is Diana.iana hi how's it going good hey is your name is it ariel ariel it's ariel ariel great um but i'll i'll answer to any of them um so i guess just to start um could you introduce yourself, say your full name, your age, and where you live? My name is Ariel. I live in a suburb outside of Detroit called Grosse Pointe Farms. And I've been working in Detroit for the last few years, and I'm 34 years old. Got it. And what have you been doing for your career? So my career for the last 20 years has been in the service industry.

And the last four years, I've been the bartender, bar manager of a Tiki Bar, which is probably the most complicated and complex of the craft cocktailing world. Like 10 ingredients per drink situation. Yeah. Yep. And when everything got shut down, like the bar got shut down, we started doing to-go service when that was released that we could start doing that. And I left during that phase because I wasn't feeling like

it was a safe environment for me and my family anymore. So it felt like the right choice to do at the time. How has it been for you not being back at the bar? And do you plan to go back? I don't plan to go back to the bar at all. I mean, a big thing about being off work because of this pandemic has opened my eyes to a lot of things. has opened my eyes to a lot of things. Like just realizing that the situation that I was in at the Tiki Bar

just wasn't good for me. You know, the service industry gets like crapped on more than any other industry. You know, it's like the worst of the worst people coming out during the pandemic to go out to eat. Like, do you really want to deal with somebody screaming in your face that the pandemic's not real and guys just thinking that they can just touch you and it's okay and it's

not, you know? Did you get that a lot? I mean, it happened. So that's more than it not happening, you know? Yeah. I would say like that, like experiencing stuff like that is definitely like was on my mind as a reason not to go back as well. That you didn't want to be sexually harassed? No. I mean, who does?

And I think sometimes when you step back, you realize things like, oh, that was happening and that was not cool and I don't want to expose myself to stuff like that anymore. And that was not cool. And I don't want to expose myself to stuff like that anymore. And as far as how this has affected me personally, you know, I had a baby. I was pregnant for a long time. So this last year and a half has been really great for my family. like my partner's been working from home he works in the auto industry he's a designer for Chrysler and he's been working from home and we had this baby and you know he's got to be home to experience this baby his whole entire life like something that just wasn't even in the cards before it feels like a lot of things that worked out really well for us during all of this. Yeah. I wanted to ask just about the finances. I'm curious about the conversations you and your

partner have had about money and how you're negotiating that since you're not returning to the bar? Well, our conversation about it is mostly, I mean, we could just live off of his income, but it would be a struggle. And a big conversation that we had as well is thinking about childcare. Like if I were to go into like an hourly position somewhere, like it would, childcare is almost certainly going to cost more. It would cost more than what you'd be making. Yeah. Like if I'm making like $15 an hour, a babysitter is going to cost $20 to $25. So it's like, is it worth it? And I think a lot of people are probably having that experience as well.

So my name is Adam Reiner. I am 46 years old. I live in Manhattan, and I've worked in the restaurant business since around 1997. And me personally, I started collecting unemployment. And then I learned that I was eligible for Medicaid, where I don't have to pay change the calculation of what health insurance I'm eligible for. In other words, there's kind of a penalty for me going back to work. So it's like, I don't think anybody would just go back to work because you want to feel like you're being a responsible person when you have to make decisions about your own health and your own welfare like that. And so for now, I would much rather take my time and try to find a situation where there's stability and security, which is not a restaurant job. And that potentially would offer me some sort of

benefits like health insurance, which so few restaurants do. Do you have like a ticking clock in terms of when your unemployment runs out and you have to kind of land on your feet? Well, thank you for adding stress to my day. Sorry. Sorry, I had to ask. The truth is that I think that these benefits will run out the first week in September. So although I don't have a calendar in front of me that is where I'm crossing off the days, it feels like about maybe six weeks or so.

I'm submitting pitches and people are offering to pay me for my writing. And that's awesome. That's awesome. Will I be able to pay my rent with that is another question. But rather than rush back into a restaurant job that's going to exhaust me, where I will have no energy or no presence of mind to work on these creative pursuits

that I really enjoy doing, that doesn't seem like a good answer either. So I think even though maybe I should be a little bit more panicky about that date and that time, you know, I still think that I might be able to continue to not officially be employed a little bit longer just to see how I do. You know, I don't want to see how I do. You know, I don't want to feel like I'm settling for something. I know tons of people in the restaurant world. I can work like in any scenario that I want pretty much.

And so, you know, some might feel that I'm being irresponsible by making that decision, but I don't really give a shit what they think. by making that decision, but I don't really give a shit what they think. These are the decisions that I need to make for my life and my own well-being. And I do not expect things to go back to normal in terms of staffing just because unemployment benefits are over. I think a lot of people are like, I've had it. I'm done with it. I can't do it anymore. I think it's of people are like, I've had it. I'm done with it. I can't do it anymore. I think it's a wake-up call. Once I took stock of my life, I was like, I'm never,

ever, ever. They're gone. Ever. They're not coming back. Ever, ever, ever going back to that. There's a whole generation. I worked at McDonald's for three years. Of us, like myself. I was overworked. You have nights where you just want to rip your hair out. There are people all around me that have this exact same story. I can barely afford like the car bills, can't afford to go to school. That are out. I started getting more inquiries for online lessons. Was able to escape McDonald's. They've taken a job somewhere else. And now I currently work at Universal. And then somewhere around like five students, six students,

I was like, maybe I should invest more time and more energy into this business and see what happens there. Because here at Universal, I get an hour break. And half of that, 30 minutes, is paid. And that, to me,

is so wonderful. Like, I actually... When they're out, they're back in school. I had just been having a conversation with my father, and he had said, why don't you go back to school?

So they can do something else for a living? Eventually, I want to be doing my own thing. E-learning is such now a huge business. Our dream is to open a cafe that is also a greenhouse. I have a lot of dreams.

I know a lot of people that have made a lot of changes. So the pandemic really created an opportunity for you that probably wouldn't have been there otherwise? Honestly, I did not ever expect that I would finish my degree at that point had the pandemic not happened. Wow. Which is a very strange silver lining, I know. I feel like I wouldn't have even considered doing that if I didn't have the time to even think about it, you know? I think I feel a lot more hopeful now. What's your plan? I've accepted a conditional offer of employment with the United States Post Office home at night, where I have holidays off, where I have benefits and the protection of a labor union.

And most of all, I'm doing it to be as far away from the tractor pull of work as I possibly can be. Well, is there anything else that you, is there anything else that I didn't ask you that you feel like I should know? Well, I was thinking the other day, I was looking at Instagram and it was, you know, this sort of trope that's going around about these low wage food places, you know, McDonald's, Chipotle, et cetera, not being able to find anyone, right, for their low-wage jobs. And it's always something along the lines of, you know, unemployment's too generous and none of these people want to come back to work. And I just, I find that so offensive. I do think that there are certain people that are saying

that, right, that unemployment's paying me far more. I don't want to are certain people that are saying that, right? That unemployment's paying me far more. I don't want to go back to work at this terrible job. And I don't blame them for that. But I also think that there's a huge part that's being left out of that conversation. And that part is this, almost 700,000 Americans have died of COVID. So I think that, A, it's super offensive to think that, you know, why won't these people come back to their terrible jobs where they're going to make less than they are on unemployment? But B, what's really not being said here is that a bunch of us died going to work. A bunch of us died.

So-called essential workers, right? Paid the highest price. So I really, I feel like that's something that's not said enough. So I did want to say that. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. We want to strongly recommend that people wear masks in indoor settings, even if you're vaccinated. On Monday, the mayor of New York asked the city's more than 8 million residents to begin wearing masks in indoor public settings, but stopped short of requiring it, something that both Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles have done.

Now, this is particularly true, of course, if you might be around anyone unvaccinated. The change came as infections across the city surged to 1,200 a day, making New York a high-transmission area under CDC guidelines. And Germany said that it would begin to offer booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine to the elderly and high-risk groups starting next month, becoming the latest European country to recommend an extra dose of the vaccine to protect against infection. Health officials in Britain, Belgium and Italy have said that they too are prepared to start

offering booster shots in the fall. The U.S. is still studying the issue and has yet to decide whether to offer them. Today's episode was produced by Asta Chaturvedi, Lindsay Garrison, Robert Jimison, Diana Nguyen, Luke Vanderplug, and Claire Tennesketter, with help from Sydney Harper Michael Simon Johnson and Alexander Lee Young it was edited by Lisa Chow engineered by Chris wood and contains original music by Dan Powell special thanks to Vivian Rusk Ben Castleman Hattie Cohen Neil Irwin Gina Smilak Sarah Maslin near Sydney Ember That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

See you tomorrow.