I’m in a city within a county that are both experiencing school bus driver shortages (as is much of the United States.)
The city is liberal/progressive leaning but the county is not—typical blue dot college town.
On the county’s NextDoor today, someone posted about losing another driver to a neighboring county, then ranted about the bad situation both for kids and parents, and for the remaining drivers, including quoting a salary of $17k a year. (I have no idea if that’s accurate or not.)
What was surprising is that ALL of the comments on this post were along the lines of “PAY THEM MORE!” “These people are driving our children—pay them!” (mixed with a few suggestions as to why various other counties could offer better deals.)
It was not the “nobody wants to work anymore”, “people are so lazy” parade I was expecting, and rather a pleasant surprise. Seems like the concept of solving worker shortages with higher pay is spreading.