that a job with the IRS (supposedly offering reasonable security and benefits?) - is somehow not clearly preferable to Walmart? Please enlighten me.

Guaranteed should you want full time pay. The receipt checkers at my Costco is pulling in $30 an hour standing there marking receipts with a sharpie.

for starting wages (and particularly for these and other retailers). Please don't attempt to extrapolate the figures you quote to the marketplace in general. Things are not nearly that rosy in retail-land (or in the workplace in general). Believe me.

Per year and median home price is $1.3 million. Retailers in these parts have to increase the starting pay. If I lived in bumfuck Arkansas where the median housing is about $130k then obviously the retailers wouldn’t need to compete with higher pay.

but you are commenting on an issue (IRS shortages) that is not specific to your area, or the prevailing wage conditions there. Frankly, I think the idea that the IRS is competing for the same pool of workers (as Target checkers) is something of an off the cuff, and inaccurate, characterization. But if we're going to pursue that (questionable) comparison ...

And pay dues? If so, I have no idea how much dues are, but maybe that’s part of the issue.

As for the nature of the jobs, I think the IRS is looking for people with training in accounting.

50 years, to be exact. Instead, we've seen our wages going to fattening C-level executives and corporate majority shareholders, who then turn around and play accounting games so they pay no taxes that might have gone to softening the blows of having such low wages, like universal health care, subsidized child care, mass transit....oh, you get the idea.

With competition for employees who can walk and chew gum at the same time, there will be upward pressure on wages--finally!

The C level execs and billionaires will all hows about inflation. Sucks to be them.