Honest question. Not political, I just don’t understand.
Imagine there’s a town of 1k people and they all serve each other – hospital workers, food service, etc. Then all 1k people die. Now there is no shortage of nurses and restaurant staff because there’s no one using the hospital or restaurant.
Now I understand that isn’t exactly what happened when a million Americans died of Covid-19. And I suspect certain types of people died with higher frequency leaving particular industries with a shortage (ie those with public-facing essential workers.) But is it that hard to shift? Say all the grocery workers died and now there’s no one to buy furniture, and the furniture store goes out of business. Well, the furniture workers could go work at the grocery store.
Or is it more like, people who work in general died, and those who don’t work survived and still need services? Regardless of whether people can’t work (ie they’re disabiled) or won’t (ie their dad got them a non-working, high-paid “job” in management?)
Surely I’m missing something, I would just like to know what it is.
In: 3
Not a complete answer, but part of it has to do with a shift in what jobs people are doing. During the shut downs, people still needed to pay bills, buy groceries, etc. A lot of people found new ways to earn money. Whether that’s starting their own small businesses, doing piece work through work for hire sites, or even breaking into new industries entirely, a lot of workers simply left the industry they had been working in and not enough new people are wanting to fill in to replace them.
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