I saw a thing a while ago that broke out a lot of reasons that I thought was interesting:
*deaths directly from covid
*long covid
*becoming a caretaker for someone suffering from long covid or for someone who would otherwise be in a long term care facility
*Care for/home school children
*Taking college classes or extending their time in college
*Trump put a lot of effort into discouraging immigrants so some of the immigrant labor force is missing
*Cost of living vs. wages plus student loans have been an issue for a long time, so people 15-20 years ago deciding not to have kids means few 15-20 year olds now than there would otherwise be.
*(Less of a thing now than when I read this originally) The stimulus checks allows people some breathing room to return to school or start their own businesses instead of being someone else’s employee
That was about half of what was on the original list I saw, but obviously this is a complex thing with a lot of different factors. But “folks don’t wanna work” is nowhere on that list!