We learned a number of things during the Covid-19 epidemic. As expected most of them about disease, mortality, and our society’s uneven ability to respond to such challenges. A major unexpected learning concerned the workforce.
Today being Labor Day, it is appropriate we think about issues dealing with labor and laboring. During the epidemic we forced literally millions out of the workforce, temporarily.
What apparently nobody expected was that substantial numbers of them would decide they preferred not working. They learned how to assemble enough government and familial transfer payments to survive, perhaps learned to be okay with the trade off of having more leisure and less money and “things,”
Now the epidemic has eased, but much-larger-than-expected numbers of people formerly doing low-level jobs decided not to look for work. They didn’t die, haven’t emigrated, are still here but not working.
Some substantial number were close to retirement age and one way or another found a way to afford to retire. Some further number decided to homeschool their kids, and are households that have only one wage earner where they previously had two. And a bunch are working age people not in school, living in their parents’ basement or equivalent.
One of the learnings probably was that when the large cost of childcare is no longer a budget item, a household can live with quite a bit less income. We know the number of homeschooled children has risen.
If you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics chart, something similar if less dramatic started during the 2008 recession and gradually continued until the epidemic when we sent a lot of people home and they’ve been slow to return.
Maybe it is an aspect of a post-industrial society? If you put enough food banks, housing assistance, disability assistance and WIC assistance in place, some number of people who would otherwise drag their tired, perhaps unhealthy bodies to uninteresting work will find it possible to not go, and will stay home.
