They are not conspiring. It just makes a lot of sense to keep operating under-staffed (your labor costs are now a fraction of what they were) as long as the revenue keeps rolling in, using "labor shortage" as an excuse to customers for why quality has gone down, and to employees for why they need to work overtime. A lot of it is also PPP loan fraud - PPP loan forgiveness terms let you weasel out of actually re-hiring staff as long as you make and document some effort at trying to hire (https://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/coronavirus/rules-for-rehiri... I assume the rules are similar for second draw). Also, why would you hire someone at what you believe is an "unreasonably" high wage right now, given that you believe that wages will go back down in the near future? If I was running a small business in the US with employees right now, I would be doing the same, no conspiracy necessary.
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