Foundry Groups: Inability to Find Workers `Has Reached Crisis Level,' Urge End to Extended Unemployment
The federal government’s exorbitant additions to state unemployment benefits, ostensibly passed to help people who were struggling in the wake of the coronavirus lockdowns, have carried enormous economic blowback in their wake. As with virtually every intervention by the government into the economy, this has fallen prey to the law of unintended consequences.
People are simply being paid too much money not to work, and so they are choosing not to work.
And this has afflicted not only traditionally low-paying service sector jobs like those in the restaurant industry, but it has even damaged traditionally working-class-oriented manufacturing jobs like metal casting.
Recently, both the American Foundry Society and the Foundry Association of Michigan teamed up to write a joint letter to Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer urging her to end the state’s practice of accepting unemployment subsidies and extensions from the federal government.