Exactly the business owners have grown used to paying 6$ an hour for an entire generation. Wage increases are unthinkable to many of them.
But the reality is sooner or later in a labor shortage it becomes simply impossible to find quality people without offering more then your competitors.
Anecdotal, for sure, but —
The company I work for (Fortune 500 big-box retail) appears to be quietly shedding people through attrition — in my store, the workforce is somewhat less than two-thirds of what it was when I came on board a year-and-a-half ago....
One data-point does not make a trend, but......