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Todd Surdez, an owner of two restaurants in the Dakotas, is one of those employers. He closed his family dining establishment, The Silver Spur, in Fort Pierre, South Dakota, on his own volition as the coronavirus spread across the nation. He reopened in May when he felt better prepared, but two of his employees decided not to return. He's been trying unsuccessfully to hire three or four new employees ever since.

\"It takes a special type of person to want to get into a hot kitchen in the middle of the summer and prepare food for people,\" Surdez told ABC News in a phone interview. \"Those are kind of difficult jobs to fill anyway. And now that we have this additional $600 a week ... that's equivalent to making over $25 an hour based on 40 hours a week. Well, the food industry can't afford that. We can't match what the federal government's paying right now.\"

Surdez said he understands there are millions of people struggling without work, but he thinks the extra boost to unemployment should be tied to cost of living rather than a flat rate for everyone.

But cutting unemployment at a time when there's no telling when the economy will bounce back is still exceedingly dangerous, experts say, and the risk is most likely to be incurred by the lowest-paid workers, who are typically Black and brown Americans.

More than half of the jobs lost from February to June have been in the nation's lowest-paying industries, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the employees are largely minorities.

\"Black, Latino, and immigrant workers are likelier to work in industries paying low wages, where job losses have been far larger than in higher-paid industries,\" the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote in a July report.

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