3 ms·

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS We only recently got back to the same number of employees as pre-pandemic.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS We only recently got back to the same number of employees as pre-pandemic. And this statistic is somewhat misleading because more people today are taking on 2x or 3x jobs. (Thanks to higher wages, extra jobs has never before been more profitable) The dip in the number-of-workers is blatantly obvious to anyone following the statistics. COVID19 "obviously caused it". Not necessarily all of it (ie: the 63+ crowd was nearing retirement anyway), but is the most obvious cause / what's different about March 2020. ------ If you have any other theories about what happened to cause that massive dip in #-of-workers on March 2020, I'm all ears. In any case, the point I wish to iterate is that number-of-workers is the most obvious explanation for our economy today. Its a statistic that stands out, above other statistics, that explains: 1. Our record low unemployment rates 2. Our record low productivity (we're making less stuff today than in 2020 pre-COVID) 3. The industries that have been affected by #1 and #2. (Lumber becoming rare because of all the housing projects people did while stuck at home. Oil prices hitting negative-dollars because so many people stopped driving. Oil prices reaching record highs as we leave the pandemic and return to normalcy, etc. etc.). Housing market going crazy as people look for good home-offices for work-from-home... We're in this really odd period of really good jobs market but fewer things being made overall. COVID19 really is a good explanation. ----- EDIT: I get these are USA's statistics. But I assume that Europe's statistics would be somewhat similar. I admit to ignorance of the European economy.

arghnoname 4y ago
Maybe it's splitting hairs, but there is COVID, and then there's COVID policies and reactions. It's sad, but with various kinds of stimulus (extra child tax credits, the COVID checks) people on the bottom of the economic totem pole were actually more flush than before COVID. Add in the shutdowns with schools and it just made more economic sense for someone to stay home with the kids than beforehand. Some, I'm sure, were also scared (some cases rightly, in others in spite of being in a statistically 'safe' demographic). In summation, I suspect that the labor force contraction was more from the reaction to COVID than people just becoming chronically ill and disabled. I sure hope that's the case, time will tell. I don't think we're disagreeing on what the numbers say, perhaps just on what we attribute the drivers for those numbers. We have a lot of different polities (US states, foreign governments, even school district to school district) where different policies were put into effect. I hope we crunch the hell out of these numbers and learn some lessons about whatever response was the best for human welfare. It's going to have to be a retrospective thing, as longer term loss from chronic illness (if it turns out that COVID does cause this in some percentage of the population) and learning loss, psychological effect, etc, etc. I fear there will be more pandemics in the future. I hope we can have a sober analysis of which harms were caused by what turned out to be erroneous policy and what harms we failed to prevent so in a future pandemic we can act in whatever way best safeguards human welfare. I sadly expect that the answers will make everyone look bad at least some of the time and for partisan reasons we won't look at this though.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  > In summation, I suspect that the labor force contraction was more from the reaction to COVID than people just becoming chronically ill and disabled. We could just look at the number of deaths in the USA and figure that out right now. We don't have statistics on long-COVID19. That's just going to be a specter for years to come. In fact, an entire political group doesn't even believe that long-COVID19 exists and is working to hide those particular statistics. But the death statistics are objective and obvious.

arghnoname 4y ago

Maybe it's splitting hairs, but there is COVID, and then there's COVID policies and reactions. It's sad, but with various kinds of stimulus (extra child tax credits, the COVID checks) people on the bottom of the economic totem pole were actually more flush than before COVID. Add in the shutdowns with schools and it just made more economic sense for someone to stay home with the kids than beforehand. Some, I'm sure, were also scared (some cases rightly, in others in spite of being in a statistically 'safe' demographic). In summation, I suspect that the labor force contraction was more from the reaction to COVID than people just becoming chronically ill and disabled. I sure hope that's the case, time will tell. I don't think we're disagreeing on what the numbers say, perhaps just on what we attribute the drivers for those numbers. We have a lot of different polities (US states, foreign governments, even school district to school district) where different policies were put into effect. I hope we crunch the hell out of these numbers and learn some lessons about whatever response was the best for human welfare. It's going to have to be a retrospective thing, as longer term loss from chronic illness (if it turns out that COVID does cause this in some percentage of the population) and learning loss, psychological effect, etc, etc. I fear there will be more pandemics in the future. I hope we can have a sober analysis of which harms were caused by what turned out to be erroneous policy and what harms we failed to prevent so in a future pandemic we can act in whatever way best safeguards human welfare. I sadly expect that the answers will make everyone look bad at least some of the time and for partisan reasons we won't look at this though.

dragontamer 4y ago
> In summation, I suspect that the labor force contraction was more from the reaction to COVID than people just becoming chronically ill and disabled. We could just look at the number of deaths in the USA and figure that out right now. We don't have statistics on long-COVID19. That's just going to be a specter for years to come. In fact, an entire political group doesn't even believe that long-COVID19 exists and is working to hide those particular statistics. But the death statistics are objective and obvious.