Disability, Immigration, and Postpandemic Labor Supply

Abstract

We study the large labor force increases since 2020 among disabled workers and among foreign-born workers in the United States. We show that the increase in the disabled labor force largely reflects a change in self-reported disability status among those already in the labor force rather than an actual increase in labor supply. We conjecture that immigration will likely contribute more to labor supply in 2024 than it did before the pandemic, but less than in 2020-2023.