@kate It’s amazing how it can be such a mystery 🧐

@kate Reminds me of the ‘90s Norm Macdonald bits on SNL: “From the medical journal ‘Duh’”

@kate Or tired of spending their lives stocking cans for a billionaire.

@kate Running businesses out of cars instead of being the system that is counted here. Who will unemployment apply to when none of us work for someone else? Haha.

@kate
Considering that's well under the number of people who have #postCOVID syndrome, and those of us who are working again are only able to do so due to Work From Home and other measures making it possible with our disability, yeah.

(Going to find this article and post my own screenshot now)

@kate who the fuck wrote this? Like they did a massive study. It was all over the news late last year. *At minimum* 2 million people are long-term/permanently disabled due to long covid.

How could they not fucking know this?

@radicalrobit @kate It is difficult for a man (just guessing on gender, but i would bet money) to know a thing when his salary depends on him not knowing it.

@radicalrobit @kate
"not know"..."obsured & hid intentionally"...same diff, right? 🙄

@kate

I know a lot of 50 & 60 year olds who said "Eff it. My house is paid off. I'm not saving for an unaffordable car or international vacation anymore. The renos aren't needed to maintain resale values because nobody's building new houses anyway. I'm retiring early."

A lot of people found out that working from home or starting a business is better.

Without daycare, women discovered daycare is unaffordable.

Many closed their daycare because liability insurance became unaffordable.

@kate

A lot of dual-citizenship workers decided to stay in countries with a real *health care* system, and not one with a *health insurance* system.

When do American corporations realize that private health insurance is a millstone around their necks?

Over a million Americans died of covid and workers are avoiding any public facing job to avoid the anti-vaxxers, Qrazies, gun nuts, anti-maskers, and violent nutbars.

Many companies have outsourced remote jobs to outside the USA.

@Npars01 I've been wondering for ages when small businesses are going to wake up and stop buying into the anti- universal healthcare propaganda. When so many lose workers to Target because they provide viable, affordable healthcare and small businesses can't, you'd think a light would go off. @kate

@kate How can people still say this is a mystery????

@kate
Easy solution: Reformed immigration policy. There's not shortage of workers, just a shortage of racial and ethnic tolerance.

@kate I guess that's too simple of an answer for #GalaxyBrainChair economists...

@kate Don't forget the number of people working multiple jobs who went "fuck it, my life isn't worth this stress".

@kate Or are caring for someone with COVID, or retired early because who the hell wants to get COVID when you’re 60, or…. I mean none of this is a deep and bloody mystery.

@kate

They lost their daycare provider...to COVID.

They quit to take care of someone sick...with COVID.

They were disabled...by COVID.

I mean, there are huge social impacts they can't see?

death statistics 

@kate 1.04 million deaths reported, death rate jumped from 8.7 to 10.5 per thousand.

having .5% of the population die is huge when you're dealing with large enough numbers.

@kate
which leads to another crucial question: where are the brains of these fucking scrambling economists?

@kate there are three categories:
- working age people who died from COVID (~500k)
- working age people who can't work due to long COVID or repercussions of the COVID lockdowns
- near retiring age people who decided to say "fuck it" during COVID

This economic phenomenon (lack of labor) appeared after the Black Death in much more acuteness (due to extreme death rate) and is a largely considered the major catalyst for upending feudalism in England.

Economists should not be wondering.

@kate this is me agreeing and wondering why this is a mystery...sigh.

@SusanPotter @kate it’s like the old saying goes, “those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it.”

@SusanPotter @kate

near retiring age people who decided to say "fuck it" during COVID

Ooh, this one has sub-categories, like:

people near retirement who were (often shortsightedly) laid off during covid, suddenly finding themselves unemployed in an environment where a new job requires either overcoming "they'd probably just retire in 2 years," aiming for a lower-paid position for which they're overqualified for, or retiring 👁️

@SusanPotter @kate Indeed. People really need to stop running from history and finally to allow themselves to learn meaningful lessons from it and to take positive action.

@kate They’ve been getting COVID19. That’s why people are not at work. They’re sick or in hospitals.

Many businesses are under staffed because of sickness not because they don’t want to work or they’re lazy taking unemployment insurance, they’re off because they’re sicken by the disease.

Some may have even been sick previously and have retained LongCovid which can come to those who were unvaccinated and never sought treatment of any kind. Sad.

I’ve spoken to restaurant owners.

@kate I would say that the same is likely here in #Australia perhaps not quite so bad.

@kate many retired early, mothers haven't rejoined the workforce because of childcare shortages, large numbers are unable to work because of long COVID, many first responders and essential workers lost their lives to COVID, and many haven't rejoined the workforce due to caretaking of partner or parents with COVID disabling conditions.

@kate right? I keep hearing it in every news story. We have a shortage of teachers, cops, airline pilots ,nurses, doctors... and every story presents each as an isolated question.

@kate Don’t forget about Trump’s anti-immigrant policies that resulted in ~2 million fewer immigrants.

@kate let's see. over 1.1 million have died from Covid. Currently, there are 103 million affected (as of Jan 9) and long covid has potentially affected 23 million which has pushed over 1 million out of work from the disability. #wearafuckingmask and if you don't want to get vaccinated, stay home.

@kate @tim They got fucking #LongCovid and are still sick. And that doesn’t even cover people like me who are trying to work while coping with it. My productivity is less than a quarter of what it used to be. We know LEAST 10% of Covid infections result in #PASC and it could be more like 30%. Let’s see 147 million estimated infections in US (cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/) is 15-44 million cases of PASC. What we don’t know is what fraction of PASC sufferers recover function and how long it takes.

@kate good lord Capitalism demands that the media plays dumb about this.

@kate No sure what your source for this blurb is, since you didn't post it, but Jerome Powell already admitted to this last month in a press conference:

axios.com/2022/12/16/the-missi

@progressiveartist @kate The Axios article discusses Civid deaths but not disabling effects of long Covid.

@Populational @kate Neither does the OP I responded to, for which we have no source. However, I have read further articles that expanded on this to include the effect of long COVID.

@kate

We have the same dumb discussion here in the UK.

The number of people who are out of work is almost exactly equal to the number on the NHS waiting list.

They cant work, they are I'll, waiting for treatment.

If the govnt funded healthcare properly, those people would be in work paying taxes.

Honestly, it sometimes feels like the UK is run by morons.

@kate Is there one simple answer to this question? Probably not. The answer is more than likely several factors. Covid as Becky said and then there are those who simply retired early and then you could also look at the decline in immigration because of covid and tRump. 2.6 million is only about 2% of the workforce. Not really a huge number.

@kate or they ain't gonna work for peanuts while being exposed to COVID with no social safety net

@kate LOl, right!?!? Lots of people who are either no longer able to work due to long COVID, decided to retire early, or are effin DEAD.

Such a "crutial question" has a damn simple answer. 🫠

@kate Over a million people died in the USA from a pandemic.

They are no longer reporting for work.

@kate I suspect a fairly large number of people retired early rather than running the risk of going to work, getting COVID and dying but I don't have an exact number for it.

@kate Start with the fact that the non-Boomer generations are not as huge as the Boomer gen & Boomers are retiring or dead. Then go directly to COVID. The missing workers are disabled or dead. Seriously? Did aliens suck out their memories of the pandemic? 1 million ppl don't just die and leave no after effect.

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