The chart below shows the number of people in the U.S. workforce. The abrupt drop in March 2020 is largely due to the pandemic closing businesses, and most of those workers left their jobs involuntarily. There’s a quick rise in summer 2020 as many businesses reopen and some of these workers return, but not all do, partly because some are kept out of the workforce by closed schools, unavailability of child care, and other factors.
By the fall of 2021, the economy was making swift job gains as reopened businesses scrambled for workers amid a labor shortage, and by March 2022 nearly as many Americans were working as before the pandemic. What the chart doesn’t reflect, but this article discusses, is a high level of “labor chart” as employers “poach” workers from each other by offering better jobs or higher pay, reflected in large numbers of quits and hires.
But several hundred thousand American workers will never return because Covid-19 killed them.
