, Columnist
Long Covid Is Showing Up in the Employment Data
More Americans in and out of the labor force are having trouble remembering and concentrating, a common Covid-19 aftereffect.
Working through it.
Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
This article is for subscribers only.
The number of Americans applying for Social Security Disability Insurance rose sharply during the 2000s, a phenomenon that appears to have been driven more by the job market — which was pretty weak for most of the decade, especially for those without college degrees — than by people’s health.
Lately, the job market has been quite strong, with the number and rate of job openings at all-time highs. Yet SSDI applications are (slowly) rising again, in their first sustained increase since 2009.