The Labor Department’s employment report for April 2021 showed only 266,000 thousand jobs created, far below what most analysts have expected. Rick Berman, who is president of Berman and Company, a longtime lobbyist for the restaurant and alcoholic beverage industry, and executive director of The Employment Policies Institute, suggests three main causes for the downturn in employment — people afraid of COVID-19, parents staying at home with their children because of closed schools, and perhaps most importantly, millions of workers earning more by staying at home collecting government unemployment extension benefits than they would by going back to work under Biden administration policies. Doug McKelway has more with Rick Berman.
