There's a market rate dictated by supply and demand for labor. In some lines of business you can overpay and do ok. But imagine a restaurant paying double the

There's a market rate dictated by supply and demand for labor. In some lines of business you can overpay and do ok. But imagine a restaurant paying double the wage of one next door. Likely this reflects through into pricing and makes them non-competitive/prone to failure, as restaurants are low margin businesses. The US has had a large surplus of low skilled labor for the past few decades, thus low bargaining power. There's a pretty obvious reason why, but I'll leave it for you to guess.