Ugh… thanks… I just dropped two family members off at the airport. (Necessary trip, unfortunately.)
So (and the segue here is “why are the airports a mess?”)… check this out from the economic data site of the U.S. FED St. Louis:
From 2016 to 2020 the U.S. labour force grew about 1.550 million per year. In June 2022 the number is 103,000 short of the January 2020 number. That means the U.S. is missing about 3,978,000 people from its labour force, or about 2.5% or one in 40. We know about 1,000,000 died in the 
from COVID, but only about 270,000 of those were working age, so that probably accounts for maybe 170,000 of the missing workers, using a ballpark labour force participation rate of 63%.
I know that this has been keeping the economists up at night but the sheer scale was a surprise to me.
