I wonder if this is evidence of friction in the labor market. Maybe all this terribleness had built up, but most people won't change paths in a big way because

I wonder if this is evidence of friction in the labor market. Maybe all this terribleness had built up, but most people won't change paths in a big way because it upends their life for a while. You're not going to learn job B if you're already in job A because, even if job B is better, the first year of B will suck more than A while you're a newbie. But then a pandemic comes along and takes away job A, meaning that there's not extra friction to leaving job A. You've already left! All these people have gone to job B (or location B, or family arrangement B, ...) which was better all along, it's just that the change had too much additional overhead in normal times. Now you have places which depended on that friction wondering where everybody went.