Opinion | The Americans Who Never Went Back to Work After the Pandemic

The latest monthly jobs numbers underscore a troubling paradox about the state of work in America. Despite recession worries, job growth seems strong, employment levels are finally above pre-pandemic highs, and unemployment rates continue to skirt 50-year lows.

But that is only part of the picture. An extraordinary “flight from work” is also under way. Inadvertently exacerbated by the largess of the Covid-19 emergency measures, that flight is spreading to parts of the U.S. workforce that didn’t suffer from it before the pandemic.