Without any snark, I suggest consuming more data. What you consider "pretty good" is the bar now [1]. Wages have been stagnant for decades. Combined with recent aggressive inflation, your idea of reasonable might simply be out of touch with the labor market. To note, there was surplus labor that made these demands untenable until COVID generated ~2-3M excess deaths over a short window of time, pulling forward reduced labor supply from structural demographic compression [2] [3]. Tangentially, 55+ who are clinging for life to labor participation are what is holding up the participation rate. Anything that causes those folks to exit the labor force more rapidly than retirement (3.6M Boomers retire per year) or death (~1.8M/year for 55+ cohort) is going to cause labor supply to dip deeper than the current forecasted curve [4].

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/21/american-workers-are-demandi... ("American workers are demanding almost $80,000 a year to take a new job")

[2] https://www.axios.com/2023/05/08/us-labor-shortage-older-wor... ("Why labor shortages could be here to stay")

[3] https://www.marketplace.org/2022/01/24/how-much-labor-force-... ("How much of our labor force has been lost to COVID-19?")

[4] https://archive.ph/sKeyE | https://seekingalpha.com/article/4531829-older-workers-propp... ("Are Older Workers Propping Up The U.S. Economy?")

(scholar of systems)