Labor Lost

Prior to Covid-19, 5 million Americans were unemployed, and the unemployment rate was 3.5%. Today, we are 7.6 million jobs short compared to before the recession. Together, that sums to 12.6 million. However, today 9.3 million Americans are unemployed. That means 3.3 million persons have dropped out of the labor force (some to collect Social Security), thereby reducing the official unemployment rate from 7.8% to 5.8%. Please come back!