The ongoing impacts of the coronavirus pandemic are still taking a toll on Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX). As I mentioned, three primary factors -- high inflation, COVID-related pay, and training and onboarding of new partners -- impacted our profitability to approximately the same degree, even while customer demand remained strong." And in a time when widespread labor shortages are opening up more options for workers, a raise of a few dollars an hour may not be enough to compensate people for accepting the elevated health risks involved with a high-customer-contact job.