Mace: Government is incentivizing unemployment; our businesses are suffering

As we finally approach the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, life in America is getting close to something that looks like “normal.” Americans are seeing friends and family, schools are reopening, offices are returning to some in-person work, and businesses across the country are getting mobbed by customers.

To accommodate this reopening, these businesses need new employees, and they’re dusting off their “Help Wanted” signs as fast as they can.

Unfortunately, many business owners are rapidly discovering that they can’t find workers to take the jobs they’re offering.

Unemployment is hovering around 6%, there are 8.4 million fewer jobs now than there were a year ago, yet business owners from California to New York can’t find people to fill their job openings.

This is as ridiculous as it is unsurprising.

Politicians in Washington are paying millions of Americans to stay home and not work, and that’s exactly what they’re doing. It’s also exactly what business owners and economists told Washington would happen when Congress extended the unconditional unemployment benefits as part of the latest COVID-relief package.

You don’t have to go far for proof of this.

Business owners in South Carolina’s Lowcountry are finding it difficult to compete with unemployment benefits.

According to S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce Executive Director Dan Ellzey, South Carolina has about 85,000 job openings posted across the state while approximately 116,000 people receive unemployment benefits each week.

An operator of eight restaurants around Charleston is among those struggling to fill vacancies just as the tourist season is starting and COVID-19 restrictions are lifting.

“Now restrictions are being lifted, people have stimulus money they want to spend, but the employees have yet to return,” the business owner told me. “This puts enormous pressures on our existing teams. Our guests expect the same quality and service, as they should. It is challenging to meet the demand when trying to operate with half the employees required in some of our locations.”

Who can blame those Americans who choose not to work?

How many people would choose to get up every day and work hard for 40 hours a week or more when, for the same salary, they can stay home?

This isn’t an issue of pay, either. Many businesses are offering $15 per hour, benefits, signing bonuses, etc. They are bending over backward to hire workers, but many still choose to stay home.

The reality is that no business — large or small — can spend or waste as much money as the United States government.

When you add the $300 weekly unemployment benefit from the federal government to as much as $326 a week that South Carolina provides, that comes to almost $16 per hour, which means some people are still receiving more money to not work than businesses can afford to pay them to work.

On top of this, Washington and state governments aren’t moving nearly fast enough to get our kids back in school, leaving millions of American parents with no way to go to work without leaving their children alone. No business can compete with that.

Make no mistake, our economy is recovering. Businesses hired nearly a million Americans in March. But there are millions more jobs that could be filled today if it weren’t for ongoing Washington payouts.

Millions of Americans could be supporting themselves and their families, independent and working.

Instead, Congress has locked millions of them into a trap where if they don’t work, they get paid, and if they do work, they won’t get paid anymore.

If they show the slightest bit of drive and independence, they’ll lose their unemployment benefits.

Politicians love to talk about how much money they spent to solve a problem or help people. Rarely do they want to actually see what all their “help” and “problem-solving” have done.