Long COVID And The Labor Shortage

One of the puzzles of the pandemic economy is the ongoing labor shortage. Many have quit their jobs, but new research points to another — and more troubling — factor that helps explain the nation's shrinking workforce: long COVID.Millions of Americans are struggling with long-term symptoms after contracting COVID-19, with many of them unable to work due to chronic health issues. 1.6 million people are missing from the full-time workforce because of the disease, which can leave people incapacitated for months with persistent symptoms including fatigue, brain fog, headaches, memory loss and heart palpitations. To put that into perspective, the country's labor force remains 2.2 million people short of its pre-pandemic size — an issue that's causing headaches for many employers.Earlier in the crisis, some business owners blamed extra unemployment aid for keeping workers on the sidelines. But those benefits ended in September, and the labor force still hasn't fully rebounded.Long COVID could keep millions of people from working or require them to cut back their hours. Long-COVID patients have said they've been warning about since the early days of the pandemic, when it became clear that anywhere from 10% to 30% of people with COVID-19 continued to struggle with symptoms for months after their initial infection.