I subscribe to the "companies have forgotten how to pay" take on this.

My employer turned a $3+ billion profit last year. $4+ billion the year before. They've been reduced to offering newhires a $125 bonus each week in exchange for actually showing up to work every day. That's all. Clock in five times a week: make $125 extra.

And here I am, making a killing in forced overtime every day because they can not get staffed. Why?

You can't find good candidates if a you can't match barista wages.

Newbies start off at $10 an hour. Newbies have to wait a year to get benefits. The job is just part-time. The schedule isn't fixed, making it hard to plan another job around. Even with the bonus: why would they stay?

Corporate is in a position where every new person they hire sucks. Because they can only get people who haven't done the barista math. And all their old hands don't give a flying fuck, because the company oh-so-wisely decided to leave them in the cold with those retention bonuses.

It is a trainwreck that everyone could see coming a mile off as the unemployment rate fell. But nobody did anything about it, because properly compensating labor is tantamount to sharing profits.