Living and working with long COVID: "I'm a cell phone battery that is constantly dying"

One of the puzzles of the pandemic economy is the ongoing labor shortage, with business owners struggling to find workers amid the so-called "Great Resignation." But new research points to another — and more troubling — factor that helps explain the nation's shrinking workforce : long COVID. 

Millions of Americans are struggling with long-term symptoms after contracting COVID-19, with many of them unable to work due to chronic health issues. Katie Bach, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said she was "floored" when she started crunching the numbers on the ranks of workers who have stepped out of the job market due to long COVID.

Her analysis found that an equivalent of 1.6 million people are missing from the full-time workforce because of the disease, which can leave people incapacitated for months with persistent symptoms including fatigue, brain fog, headaches, memory loss and heart palpitations.