People are posting pictures of empty shelves on the internet. Now, depending on where you live and when you visit your supermarket, there was always a chance you would see an empty shelve, especially after a weekend where the store was busy. Monday was a day when shelves got restocked. It was never considered a crisis but now it is being portrayed as one.
There are plenty of articles being published but only those issued by biased news outlets depict this as some sort of crisis. The main reasons, outside of the normal one where stores want to sell everything on the shelves during busy periods, is staff shartages and supply chain issues.
Maybe it's a sign of our prosperity or a sign of the falling birth rate or a lack of immigrants but stores are facing labor shortages. Stocking shelves is not the most desirable of jobs, but we used to have enough part timers to do it. Not so much anymore it seems. I did this job when I was in high school for a while and besides paying you poorly, they used to make you deduct fees for things you were unlikely to ever use, like union pensions. Still, it was a job. between prosperity and the Pandemic, it seems like they don't pay enough.
Similarly, deliveries to the stores are less reliable. Omicron has spread so quickly that disruptions are inevitable. I've not experienced many empty shelves, but I also have opted to use delivery primarily and sometimes they can't find something. They generaly can find a substitute product but it is at most an inconvenience, not a crisis.
If you are old enough, we used to talk about the Soviet Union's failure to have supermarkets like we did and do. They had real supply problems we have people out sick.
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