Last Friday, the Department of Labor released its monthly jobs report, and oh, the disappointment.

The President today faced the biggest challenge yet to his strategy to revive the economy.

The Labor Department reported 266,000 jobs were added in April. That's far short of the one million that some

economists had expected. If you need proof that we live in strange times, today's job report

just smacked us all over the head with reality. Remember, the vaccine and states reopening

were supposed to be jet fuel. Instead, the big headline is people aren't going back to

work anywhere near as fast as we thought. In a rare moment of genuine surprise in Washington,

some economists said they didn't know what precisely suppressed employment growth. But in Washington,

I don't know, is an unacceptable vacuum that must instantly be filled with hot-take speculation.

And so the narrative, the jobs are there, but no one wants them.

The great labor shortage of 2021.

And as the anecdotes of fast food chains begging for workers and local restaurants

limiting hours poured in, so did theories of an alleged culprit, COVID-era unemployment benefits

that were supposedly depressing America's work ethic. On the road to recovery, another blow to the tourism and hospitality industry.

Businesses now struggling to find enough employees in order to fully reopen.

As Georgia businesses recover from the pandemic, business owners have gone from seeing a shortage

of customers to a shortage of employees.

And even on these conference calls for earnings this week, we've been hearing a lot of CEOs talk

about, they're worried about labor shortages down the line.

Government Largesse has turned workers into freeloaders?

Yeah, no. Heidi Sheerholz is the Director of Policy at the Economic Policy Institute. She served

as chief economist at the Department of Labor during the Obama administration. Heidi, welcome to the show.

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