I see where you’re coming from, but I think this is missing the point somewhat. The truth is that minimum wage has been in dire need of a cost-of-living adjustment for a long time, and the jobs that OP is referring to were ones that you simply couldn’t support yourself on. And when many of them were laid off in 2020 or quit to avoid covid, they found out that they could literally support themselves better on unemployment than they could on their old paychecks. They’re saying that the reason so many people are unwilling to work is that, whether they have the funds to live without a job or not, actually working one of those jobs wouldn’t support them any better.