A couple of things. First, it isn't just deaths, a lot of people were hospitalized and/or have long-term effects because of contracting Covid. This tends to be

A couple of things. First, it isn't just deaths, a lot of people were hospitalized and/or have long-term effects because of contracting Covid. This tends to be in younger populations (although not young), because older populations tend to be the ones that just die. Second, a lot of people retired well before they usually would to stay out of the path of covid or covid-induced craziness. This is a big part of the school bus driver shortage, for instance. A lot of older people drove school buses for a bit of extra cash, and to be around kids. Wisely, a lot of them decided to stop doing that, and might not come back for a while. So it isn't just deaths that are the reason for a reduced working population, although that has an impact, too.