Summary:
- Some people who get the COVID-19 virus have long-term health problems called “long COVID.”
- People with disabilities may have been able to work more because of remote work.
- Between 281,000 and 683,000 workers, or between 0.2% and 0.4% of the labor force, leave the workforce.
There is more and more evidence that some people who get the COVID-19 virus have long-term health problems called “long COVID,” which could cause them to stop working due to COVID-19 and their workplace being altered. At the same time, people with disabilities may have been able to work more because of remote work. We use data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) to figure out how long COVID and remote work affect the number of hours people with disabilities work and whether or not they are in the labor force.
We talk about three things about COVID-19 and Your Workplace
What is the effect of long COVID and remote work on the labor force and work hours?
AUN News found that the combination of long COVID and more remote work has had a negligible effect on the labor force, reducing it by between 281,000 and 562,000 workers, or between 0.2% and 0.4%.
We find signs that the number of hours worked is decreasing, but they are not very big. We think that people with long COVID who stayed in the workforce cut their average work hours by between 2.2% and 3.4%, which led to a loss of between 20,000 and 39,000 full-time equivalent workers.
Two, how many people quit their jobs because COVID was so long?
By breaking down our total estimate into the effects of long COVID and remote work, we think that between 281,000 and 683,000 workers, or between 0.2% and 0.4% of the labor force, left the workforce because of long COVID.
Third, how did the spread of remote work affect the number of people with disabilities who work and how many hours they work?
We don’t see much evidence that the spread of remote work has made it easier for people with disabilities to work, and we don’t see any evidence that it has made people work more hours.
Since the pandemic’s start, the number of people with disabilities in the labor force and the number of hours they work have increased. Long-COVID individuals are more likely to work and put in longer hours than those who would have been disabled by the virus regardless, suggesting a composition effect among those who report a disability to the CPS.
But our evidence suggests that remote work might have had a small positive effect on the participation of disabled people ages 45 to 64, adding up to 121,000 workers to the labor force.
