> A possible explanation is that "is very mild in younger people" is not true often enough to matter. It is true enough to matter unless you can show otherwise

> A possible explanation is that "is very mild in younger people" is not true often enough to matter. It is true enough to matter unless you can show otherwise... because, again, to be deemed unfit to work the health issue must be very serious. And of course this is all political. Those numbers, criteria, and decisions to deem people "economically inactive" and not to count them as unemployed are all based on policy. Again, cynically we need to keep in mind that this keeps unemployment numbers low when the economy is flat-lining (really the actual elephant in the room since 2019). We can't ignore the state of the economy and the political aspect. This Keep Britain Working review is political (it is a government review) and the proposal that "firms were likely to face a cost of £5-15 per employee per month to provide improved levels of occupational health is farcical and suggests that real issues are avoided (c.f. previous paragraph). The rise in economic inactivity also seems to be UK-specific, which also points to reasons beyond Covid and "health" [1]... Anyway, can only lead a horse to water, so have a nice one... [1] https://obr.uk/box/how-does-economic-inactivity-compare-across-advanced-economies/ https://obr.uk/box/how-does-economic-inactivity-compare-acro...