Most of these labor articles are about participation - which is a percentage. Unless it killed laborers disproportionately, and spared non-laborers - absolute d

Most of these labor articles are about participation - which is a percentage. Unless it killed laborers disproportionately, and spared non-laborers - absolute deaths is a non-issue for participation. It's obviously an issue for the total labor force. That said, >75% of deaths occured in 65+ [1]. ~200k*.61 = ~122k people in a workforce of 165M is a rounding error. .61 = labor force participation rate [2] Additionally, almost 85% of deaths occured in 55+, and participation for 55-65 is already pretty low (~38%). Articles would've stated the obvious (that people died) if it was a major cause. Almost 3M dropped out of the labor force. Deaths probably account for less 4% of that. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-... [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART