Employers have been bitching about the lack of workers lately, especially in the hospitality industry, and while I suspect a lot of it is simply workers sensibly saying I want something more meaningful and interesting, I have to wonder if part of the problem of the missing workers is … that they’re dead.
The undercount in coronavirus-linked deaths in Macon County, home to around 15,000, as a result of the coroner’s actions is relatively small. The Kansas City Star, which first broke news of the story, pegged the figure at a half-dozen or more. But it comes amid broader recognition that the number of covid fatalities in the United States is probably higher than the official tally of 614,000.
In Macon, some requests came from people who wanted to avoid being reminded of how they could not see family before their deaths because of restrictions on visits to hospitals and nursing homes. “A lot of families were upset. They didn’t want covid on the death certificates,” the county coroner, Brian Hayes, told the Star. …
In May, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington said the actual number of deaths in the United States caused by the pandemic could be over 900,000 — higher than the roughly 580,000 deaths logged at the time. [WaPo]
Figure a million dead, subtract 300,000 for retirees, that leaves us with 700,000 unavailable for employment. Add in the latest infected, the long Covid sufferers, the reluctant and the disgusted and the retraining and those who are too afraid to return to work, whether it be morbidities or just fear.
We might be up near a million who were available and no longer are. It may not be surprising that we’re short of workers.
And then there’s all the families too embarrassed to permit Covid-19 to be listed as the cause of death … !
