This can't be the explanation. If it were true, the workforce participation rate would be steady. Changing jobs doesn't raise or lower that figure. A person is employed whether they scrub toilets or do brain surgery.
But it's not steady. Literally millions of people have stopped working and looking for work since 2020.
People realized that they didn't need to work shitty jobs. They could Uber part time, or work as a nanny without reporting as a full time employee or cut down on their living expenses or live off of government programs. Just look at how many people live in tents in California.
You can find (more than a year old at this point) articles from bar owners trying to re-hire their old staff. Those people found new jobs, because they had no choice. They couldn't afford to not work for years.
And, unsurprisingly, they wanted more money to return. Restaurants, hotels, and the like, tend to be extra stress for no more pay.
Well, about 1,245,000 of them died [1], and I'm sure there were a substantial number of older working-age people who went for early retirement to reduce the chances of dying from public contact.
I hope this isn't too shocking but a lot of janitorial and housekeeping work is done by retirement aged people who don't have enough money to actually retire.
The other big piece - especially to the hospitality puzzle - is that immigration was substantially reduced. First politically and then due to Covid. If you look at the number of work visas issued by year, we’re short literally millions of immigrants that would be doing much of the grunt work in restaurants and hotels.
That’s what is a massive issue I see in the EU even if it’s underreported; too many people I know cannot work because of long covid. Some tried anyway and burnt out because of trying too hard; now they have 2 problems. Luckily most of them are in NL where you won’t end up in a tent under a bridge, but I think long covid is taken way too light (at least over here).
If by NL you mean the Netherlands: Long covid falls under a weird category which for all practical purposes means you have to fight the UWV nail and tooth to get even the tiniest bit of leeway. Which you can't since working 40h/week to get proper care+benefits is exactly the problem you are trying to avoid. Oh, and the state already said the uwv should stop doing that but they keep going like they always did. (my evidence for this is anecdotal second hand though).
This is the most reasonable explanation. I even know a couple people whose jobs were affected by Covid took the time (and government support) to do a career change.
It happened with the airlines too. When you're without a job for more than a year, people move onto new companies, new careers or just retire early.
Singapore airlines continued to pay their pilots to not fly during Covid, knowing it would be tough as hell to restaff once they opened up. Apparently they rotated them through what little flights were available (cargo predominated) to maintain their skills. Once flights were restarted, they had no problem with staff shortages.
Engineering companies spent all my uni years at fairs to show politicians how they develop business in the area, but lack workers and need assistance from the public services
Fast forward to covid, they wouldn't hire you because they didn't have the projects, they wanted to hire workers with experience, market was tight so you had to understand the pay was low, they could find someone else, ...
So I went to an IT company, they really hired workers.
And I'll stay.
I declined interviews with these engineering companies that called back a few months later. And I can't wait to go back to these fairs to call them liars.
In my place, there is also the same case with restaurants. The government gave them money to continue to exist through covid. But most of them fired workers to use the money to buy new kitchens. Now they're complaining about the lack of workforce, blame unemployment benefits (ironic) and are lobbying to give visas to underpaid foreigners.
There's also the toll COVID took on the workforce, and COVID-related disabilities.