Yes, I think this is driven by corporate friendly mainstream media to mostly drum up for support for more corporate welfare while simultaneously painting Americans as lazy and undeserving of welfare themselves.
There's a lot going on:
- Boomers, a huge part of the workforce, are beginning to retire, and they aren't coming back
- The US is near full employment [0]. As such, workers have more power. They can "resign" and go somewhere else relatively easily, or they don't have to take poor jobs
- If a business closes right now due to lack of workers, the owner might make the claim that Americans are just lazy & don't want to work, and corporate friendly media might push that idea. However, remember, we're at a time when we're approaching full employment. The business likely wasn't attractive to workers. So is it really the (lack of) workers' fault? Or was the business just poorly run? It's hard to admit that, and easy to blame others. It's OK for businesses to fail, though. Most do.
I think it's really a matter of perspective. If you're used to having a lot of workers (some of whom don't have the luxury of looking for a good job and need to take any job they can get, just to qualify for stuff like food assistance) fighting each other for the same job, so you're able to pay them less, this is a bad situation. If you're a worker who now has many employers vying for your talents, it's a good situation, but you rarely see that story being told in the corporate media.
0 - https://www.axios.com/jerome-powell-full-employment-27be7355...
