If people cannot find jobs worth taking compared to what they get on unemployment, they aren't going to re-enter the workforce with any gusto.
The vastly more reasonable solution to this is cutting unemployment, as there's been
plenty of time for the businesses to sweeten the deal. If they're still not offering better than unemployment, it's extremely likely they
can't.
Concerns about the deficit are something of a farce and red herring, because the Fed Reserve will always be able to print more money and fiddle with interest rates if inflation gets too bad.
If the inflation rate "gets too bad", that's an agonizing years-long recovery that obliterated the savings of most of the country, not something the Fed can fart out with the money-printer and loan terms. Being as how it was
fucking caused by those exact things, and must be solved by the
opposite; I.E.
reducing the money supply. What is the framework for the US government to reduce the supply of US dollars?
You can find a job easily.
One just has to be willing to work to get higher pay
Not true, the job market doesn't actually have a ready supply of jobs all that much better than what people were already working remotely available with existing credentials. It isn't simply "work harder", a lot of them practically
mandate connections and those that don't will BTFO you if you don't meet what is very nearly a catch 22 of often rather expensive qualifications.
If those jobs exist? They're already taken. Simple as that. They aren't in sufficient supply for the COVID-subsidy-induced unemployment surge, because that surge is overwhelmingly predicated on getting more or only marginally less in unemployment than from working.
Many businesses just don't have the on-hand cash to pay people more, even if they're extremely excellent workers, and it'd take years of raises to see it in many positions rather than something that exists on the job offer.
Somewhat.
Depends on if you want to pennypinch for a few years or not
See, this is the big lie of "Just Work Harder": It actually doesn't work without planning things out for literal years and hunting for very specific jobs where working harder actually results in raises. It isn't just doing a good job, it's
looking for a job that doing good pays. Lot of people have enough problems finding a job that'll take them in the first place.
My brother went through something like 300 applications in two months, multiple applications
every day until he actually got hired, and ended up taken on by a temp agency, not employed by a workplace. He has in fact gotten his shit together well, and is closing in on the down payment for a house at under 30 with jobs consisting almost solely of high-turnover low-skill manufacturing.
He's
spectacularly unusual. He does not use credit cards. He has a wife he lives with who has her own job, and they actually handle bills together instead of treating one paycheck as disposable income. The worst expense in his hobbies is Magic: the Gathering, and to my understanding he sticks to trading and packs rather than buying singles. He's been living in a run-down
trailer the last five years, to my recollection, and very specifically
could not have done it alone.
It's not just "pennypinching". It's specifically going out of your way to
deliberately live a shit life for
years so you can have your feet under you without debt and a well-paying job, and even then
it will often be requiring two separate full-time paychecks to get started. People are not going to routinely actively make their life worse for
potential future payoff on a large scale, people do not natively plan things out like that.
This is not some small adjustment. This is not some straightforward best-practice. People are not taught
goddamn any of this shit, and pulling it off alone is very nearly completely impossible without careful planning for years before you even
look at getting a job to get good credentials right when you enter, or sacrificing
everything on the alter of "Working Hard" by holding down two full-time jobs and ignoring non-vital expenses to get the requisite savings for credential-hunting. Because the jobs that pay well
up front require quite considerable credentials, and are in extremely limited supply.
It isn't enough to pennypinch for a few years, you have to specifically have a career in mind and an entry strategy, and be
extremely thorough in planning that out, and
even then it's liable to end up unsuccessful because someone else who didn't work quite as hard to meet the minimum standards had connections, or you end up making a mistake, or the job market gets bricked at a critical moment, or sudden medical issues happen, or any number of other things buggering such long-term behaviors.