Caring for aging parents, sick spouses is keeping millions out of work
Courtney Russell loved her job managing a Charleston, S.C., candy store. But early in the pandemic when her husband’s cancer returned, she felt she had only one choice: to quit.
Her husband, Doug Curtin, needed a bone-marrow transplant and months of chemotherapy. But hiring a home nurse, so she could keep working, seemed risky with rising coronavirus rates in early 2020.
Two years later, the couple is getting by financially with help from family. Curtin still needs help showering, walking and standing, and Russell says it could be years before she considers looking for work again.
“I thrived in my job and to be honest, I don’t do well when I’m not working,” said Russell, 42, who spent nearly two decades in retail after working her way up from a part-time seasonal hire to store manager. “But ultimately his health comes first.”
Even as the job market rapidly approaches the levels last seen before the coronavirus pandemic, a lack of affordable care for older and disabled adults is keeping many out of the workforce. At least 6.6 million people who weren’t working in early March said it was because they were caring for someone else, according the most recent Household Pulse Survey from the Census Bureau. Whether — and when — they return to work will play a role in the continued recovery and could reshape the post-covid labor force.
For all the attention on parents — and mothers in particular — who stopped working to care for children during the pandemic, four times as many people are out of the work force, caring for spouses, siblings, aging parents and grandchildren, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest Monetary Policy Report.
