OK, long answer, but here goes: what I am talking about is the refusal to work for a wage that is the market standard at the moment. The stay at home protest seems to be about to fail, barring some other stupid stimulus check scheme. Within the overall economy credit card balances are increasing with interest rates all over increasing, price inflation is eating further into savings, evictions are ramping up on both rentals and mortgages, vehicle and recreational vehicle repos are high and increasing, savings rates are declining, rents are increasing and the stay on student loans is sunsetting. These are all things that are being discussed frequently in the news. One is bad, but all of them together is a storm. Not taking a job when they were available MAY be the thing that bites a number of these types in the ass as those jobs they refused could have at least provided some income that they may not have been laid off from. If this goes the way I think it is, there will be serious competition for some of the jobs that they had previously turned their nose up at. Everyone who was looking could see this coming right about the time the stimulus checks were printed and the printing presses kept going like an M134 minigun. The numbers indicate the people are tapping into their savings more and more, and some of them are doing it because they are obstinate about what they envision that their skills are worth in the marketplace while the free market is indicating otherwise. I get it, but at some point we all have to bite the bullet to avoid killing our savings to make a personal point that no one really cares about but us. To be more blunt: no one cares if I want to stick to my ideas of a wage that supports my lifestyle and I end up starving in the process.
Sometimes we all have to do what is necessary, if only for a little while until something better comes along. This includes potentially having to work two jobs to make ends meet. Now the competition for jobs is going to increase, and a resume with a large blank in it has a higher chance of being turned down than one that has been active somewhere else and kept their skills sharp - unless they are willing to come on at a lower wage that reflects the use of rusty skills. This is the reality. I personally am not hiring anyone who has been playing xbox and eating Doritos for two years or even six months. I will, however, seriously consider a person who has been working at another job that they picked up to tide them over until they found a better job. It comes down to character and work ethic, and I'm betting here very soon the employers will have their pick of people. I have already had experienced workers coming from other competitors that are shutting down. What is interesting about that is that the other shops are losing work because there is no one to hire, so now the workers there are jumping ship before it goes down. This whole economy is about to bite us all in the ass, the only question is how deeply. For those without jobs its going to bite many very hard as Murphy and Reality start to knock on the door about the time the savings run dry. For those that want to work and have been working I feel the future is brighter than for those who have chosen to sit on their butt.
Its not going to be the employer that blinks - they are beginning to lay people off, just as a few of us on here have been explaining for quite some time. The remaining employers will increasingly NOT have to raise wages, and may not be able to because of the stupidly high rate of increase of input costs. This whole thing is a natural outcome of raising rates and printing a shit-ton of money to support BS efforts in a consumer-lead economy where the savings rate is very low. Its a situation where the real financial exposure is not to investment risk, but one of lifestyle and maintenance/upkeep. This means that those who have chosen to not get jobs may very well be looking at stepping a few rungs down on the socioeconomic ladder, perhaps permanently. This is especially true of those who are heavily indebted but have low or no income to support the debt - c/c, mortgage, car, boat, etc.
Some have a different opinion than I do on the matter, but this is my experience with it so far.