Some stylized facts:
- The pandemic caused 1M+ deaths, probably 15% more if looked at excess deaths
- 3M+ workers retired early as a result of the pandemic
- Long covid could be responsible for up to a third of the decline in labor supply
- 140K+ Children lost their primary care giver so others had to stay home
- Labor supply is still a full percentage point below pre-pandemic levels
- Title 42 has kept out about 2.5M immigrants
- There are 10M+ unfulfilled job vacancies, at least 2M more than the pre-pandemic level
- Wage increases were not a prime cause of inflation
- Profit margins are at their highest level since the 1950s
Yet despite all of these indications of extraordinary tightness of the US labor market, real wages have actually fallen 3% since March 2021
