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n p r

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this is the indicator from money i'm

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wayland wong

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and today is

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jobs friday we got news today

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that jobs

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added to the us economy in august, even

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as the unemployment rate, rose a little was

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largely driven by people wanting to return to

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and while the total number of jobs has

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returned to pretend damage levels the

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data also showed that the size of the

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labor force is still smaller than it was

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before coven close to three million people

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smaller so

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oh where are they

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this is a question that has nagar us at

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the indicator for months and it is also

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haunted economists and people who study

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the labor market people the back

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there have bad

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the whole number of narratives everything from

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people don't want to works you unemployment insurance

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was too generous to people

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are leaving bad jobs he's

1:02

been trying to pin down another explanation

1:04

for the missing workers and it is workers

1:07

have lost their jobs or cut back there hours

1:09

because they're struggling with long pole

1:12

that they still have symptoms for months

1:14

after infection

1:15

ramos show will look

1:17

at how researchers like katie are trying

1:19

to account for the impact of long kobe

1:21

to on the labor market plus

1:24

will also meet one of those affected workers

1:30

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then porter used to work as an organic

2:09

chemist she analyzed soil

2:11

and water samples for this lab in billings

2:13

montana and often

2:15

those samples wouldn't get put into the site's

2:18

foot and has long glass or

2:20

june shaped container

2:22

involves a lotta shakin a lot

2:24

is getting those molecules outta

2:26

there till you mean literally shaking

2:29

yeah like his business decision

2:31

like this is this is a fucking

2:34

they are lying your hands about a foot apart you just

2:36

like kind of like waving them from side side yeah

2:38

as you might imagine this is not

2:40

work that can be done from home so

2:43

when the pandemic it gen kept going to the lab

2:45

every day but then in

2:47

september twenty twenty the got sick

2:50

cooking bacon on a saturday morning

2:52

and i go

2:53

i cannot smell this bacon and

2:56

went to take of i and i could not taste the

2:58

bacon within twenty four

3:00

hours i had i had fever i

3:03

didn't feel like i did get out of bed

3:07

it was hard ,

3:09

breathe breathe

3:12

, so sorry

3:14

i wasn't and even think that i would tear up

3:16

a lot of the it's recalling this but

3:18

if this not like physically

3:21

ah so

3:24

i doubt just kind of like

3:26

not in control of my own body

3:28

then got two weeks of paid sick

3:31

leave at the end of the two weeks

3:33

per contagious symptoms had subsided

3:35

so she dragged results back to the lab

3:37

but when she would get home at night she would be

3:39

too tired see a cook dinner or to

3:41

care for pats does also a single

3:44

mom and she and her nine year old son used

3:46

to go hiking and camping together she

3:48

couldn't do that anymore either

3:50

couple months later jen was hit with a migraine

3:52

at work which major collapse and

3:54

following advice from er doctor she says she

3:56

tried asking for reduced

3:58

hours from her employer but that

4:01

request when nowhere and

4:03

in the meantime she was still getting migraines and

4:05

body aches and fatigue i

4:07

had to do something as soon

4:09

as possible get

4:12

myself to a point where i said

4:15

september twenty twenty one a year after

4:17

first getting sick jen quit her job

4:19

at the lab she became one of the ranks

4:21

of cool the long hollers who left their jobs

4:24

for health reasons and while there's been

4:26

lots of anecdotes like chance trying

4:28

to calculate the number of workers in

4:30

this group has been a big challenge

4:32

for researchers like tt box at

4:35

the time this is back in the

4:37

end of twenty twenty one i mean

4:39

we've had nothing and the

4:41

way of data

4:43

it is a non resident senior fellow at brookings

4:45

and she says cofidis did

4:47

affect the labor force more than a quarter

4:49

million working age americans lost their lives

4:52

but she's been focus specifically on this

4:54

issue of long cove it and the labor market

4:57

and when she started to dig into that she sent

4:59

a lot of clues but nothing

5:01

that gave her that your reek a moment of oats

5:04

year or all the missing workers

5:06

take for example labor force participation

5:09

this is the percentage of people sixteen or over

5:11

who are either working or actively looking

5:13

for a job this rate is down

5:16

about a percentage point from pre pandemic

5:18

levels so that points to people

5:20

leaving believer

5:21

for some about decrease

5:23

is due to retirements and

5:25

also a drop in immigration

5:27

meanwhile the labor participation rate for

5:29

people with disabilities went up significantly

5:32

during the pandemic suited the overall

5:35

number of disabled people in the us

5:37

this suggests to katie that there could be

5:39

people with long covert who stayed

5:41

in the labor force they didn't leave

5:44

but maybe they reduce their hours

5:46

then you might say okay we'll have the percentage

5:48

of people working part time gonna like not really

5:51

the guy that doesn't necessarily

5:54

mean anything because it's

5:56

potentially easiest for people who are already

5:58

power time

5:59

reduce their our it's like layers and

6:02

layers of complexity adding

6:04

to this complexity this that katie

6:06

did not think that the us census

6:08

bureau which surveys and collects

6:11

labour data is where we get our data for jobs

6:13

friday she didn't think that the census

6:15

bureau was fully capturing the number of people

6:17

with long cove it she was worried

6:19

that there were people with these persistent

6:22

symptoms who because of

6:24

the waiters census questions were why

6:26

did they wouldn't be counted as have as disability

6:29

or as being too ill too work

6:31

that changed significantly in june

6:34

and katie got some of the data she needed

6:36

the census bureau started asking directly

6:39

about long cozad and one of it's household

6:41

surveys people can now report

6:43

as they've experienced symptoms for three

6:45

months or longer that they didn't have before

6:47

getting the virus symptoms like fatigue

6:50

brain fog and changes and taste and

6:52

smell so

6:53

with this new data katie crunch

6:55

the numbers and she estimates

6:57

about sixteen million working age

6:59

americans have long covert

7:02

that obviously the question as well how

7:04

many those work

7:05

the one hundred pitches mean i

7:08

haven't recovered sense of smell it could also

7:10

mean i literally can't get outta bed

7:12

so for the next step katie looked at a few

7:14

different studies on long covert and workers

7:17

she use that data to calculate her own estimate

7:19

for the american labor force and she

7:21

thinks she might have found some the missing workers you

7:24

can four million full time

7:26

equivalent workers could be out of work

7:28

get along so that a little less than

7:30

two percent of the civilian workforce

7:33

no kidding uses the term full time

7:35

equivalent because some of those workers might

7:37

have been full time and then gone down to

7:39

part time or maybe they were already

7:42

part time and then cutter hours even more

7:44

this isn't as simple as a bunch of people

7:46

got sick and disappeared from the workforce

7:48

the pandemic has reworked the landscape

7:51

work

7:52

we're seen a lot of a lot

7:54

of impact of that

7:56

have your number is with an economist at

7:58

harvard has also been looking into do

8:00

you estimate line up with tedious calculations

8:03

on the number of affected were

8:04

very still katie has

8:07

gotten push back on whether she overstates the

8:09

size of the problems she admits

8:11

there's still a need for more and better

8:13

data she also hopes

8:16

for finding skyn help catalyze

8:18

a push for better policies around paid

8:20

sick leave an accommodating workers

8:22

with long cove

8:24

the don't need a better safety net to

8:26

me the economic argument of this of

8:29

let them take the fight off

8:31

the rest to invest in how to hopefully

8:33

get better and let them take time off and

8:36

continue

8:37

our money they can afford health care

8:39

of that can get them back to work which

8:41

really would have helped out people like jen porter

8:44

in billings montana she's on who quit

8:46

her full time job as a chemist when she couldn't

8:48

get the russian needed today she

8:50

makes jewelry at home and sells it online

8:52

at a unique pieces like

8:54

this long beaded necklace have

8:57

necklace issue

8:58

yeah i'm here as bad

9:02

many are gathering

9:04

wrong

9:05

the property and china

9:07

now gents as she can adjust for hours

9:09

and or pace based on how she feels

9:12

as fast as and

9:15

the

9:16

you shouldn't saw that when keep that with you

9:20

ah i i have i

9:23

have

9:25

we will not have a show on monday

9:27

for labour day so maybe

9:30

to mark the occasion you could listen to some previous

9:32

indicator episodes about believer business

9:34

yeah, it's not called kill at the beach folks,

9:36

by

9:38

nicki, will add an engineer by robert rodriguez

9:40

it was fact-checked by katherine yang, ubi

9:43

laser senior producer can candidates the

9:45

show and the indicator production of npr

9:51

listen

9:53

to planet money for all

9:56

kinds of and interesting stories

9:58

that just happened to t the will be

10:00

about money

10:01

and the economy and how the world well senate

10:03

money thing npr sustaining