Citation From the May 8, 2021, edition of CNN's Smerconish
MICHAEL SMERONISH (ANCHOR): Eric, there are many factors at play here, right? Fear of getting COVID, schools that are not yet open, lack of a skill set for jobs that exist. But you were a guest on my radio program, and after you left, then came a torrent of calls from small-business owners. I can tell you, they absolutely believe that government money has disincentivized the workforce.
ERIC MORATH (REPORTER, WALL STREET JOURNAL): Yeah, absolutely. The feeling among businesses is that the enhanced unemployment benefits are providing a large disincentive. And I think that it’s certainly the case for lower wage jobs. You mentioned the average payment could be a little bit more than $600. That's about $15 an hour working full-time. So if you're looking for jobs in that $10 to maybe $18 an hour range, it's going to be hard to convince someone they should come to work, spend the child care costs, spend the commuting costs when they could stay at home and maybe wait until things play out through the summer.
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SMERCONISH: So I understand [Professor Robert Reich’s] point, Eric. His point is to say, well if you're a small business person, then pay your labor force more to which I guess a small business person would say, I'm now in the position of competing with the federal government in terms of how much I'm going to pay.
MORATH: Right. And in some ways, people have said it kind of creates a de facto $15 minimum wage, which of course Congress considered and didn't pass earlier this year. Now, some employees, the workers I talked to say they know there might be a job at a fast food restaurant or ecommerce warehouse out there, but they don't want that job, they want the job they lost back. So maybe that's at a mall or at a higher-end restaurant where they think they could earn more money and maybe that’s at something like live events or even an office-type job. And actually half of workers surveyed recently said they want to work, but they want to work from home. So that’s really hard to match those folks with someone that is not filling that fast food drive-thru.
SMERCONISH: Right, and that takes us back to what I said earlier. Part of the reason they want to work from home is because they have a safety concern about the workplace or because the schools aren't open. This opens up a whole other can of worms, because the schools aren't open, they need child care that they can't support because they have got to take care of their kids.