Facepalm

And that was kinda my point. The issue isn't just that these jobs won't pay the bills (with a bit to spare) but rather that they won't pay the bills, there are less generally-available jobs that do, and those often have hefty requirements well beyond what they should.

People are being pushed down in the job market and the "McJobs" are insufficient for most people to get by. There user you be more positions that did at one point pay better than flipping burgers and they didn't require you have a Masters', five years experience, and 50 grand of student debt courses.

There were also more retail positions for those that wanted something a bit different than serving up food from a drive-through window. They didn't pay that much more but it was still something, and people became very knowledgeable in those positions. Want to know what tool does job X, what paint to use for job Y, or where to find the latest movie/single/book from some lesser-known artist: there was a staff member that knew that, and they knew the regular customers too! There was a guy whose main job was to put your groceries in a bag and maybe bring it out to the car.

Now we have adults taking up dual serving jobs and a side hustle in order to make ends meet. That's not "end at 4pm and chill" that's "collapse at home and get a minimal amount of sleep before going at it again and again and again".

Corporations cut staff, don't increase pay, and make record profits. I'm not sad that somebody might be working a McJob because they want to want to, I'm sad because they're probably working several part-time because they HAVE to and still struggling to get by, with little to no down-time and no opportunities for change.

And when a bunch of people finally say "fuck it" and employers can't find even enough people to staff their bare-minimum shift schedule, they cry to the government who brings in a million people from other countries to exploit instead of having the corps actually be pressured to make those jobs less shitty.