They likely do understand, but are just waiting for the extra federal unemployment benefits to end. The smart choice (from an employer's standpoint) would be t

They likely do understand, but are just waiting for the extra federal unemployment benefits to end. The smart choice (from an employer's standpoint) would be to make it past September 6th without significantly increasing wages, then evaluate. If they give workers a higher wage now and it turns out to be unnecessary once the extra unemployment ends, it'll be pretty much impossible to take that back without replacing the entire staff at once.