The number of Americans applying for Social Security Disability Insurance rose sharply during the 2000s, a phenomenon that appears to have been driven more by the job market — which was pretty weak for most of the decade, especially for those without college degrees — than by people’s health.

Lately, the job market has been quite strong, with the number and rate of job openings at all-time highs. Yet SSDI applications are (slowly) rising again, in their first sustained increase since 2009.

Social Security field offices were closed to visitors from March 2020 until this April, which the Social Security Administration said led to a decline in disability claims. So some of what we’re seeing is just catchup. But there is something else that might also be playing a role: the lingering effects of Covid-19 infections, aka Long Covid.

Given that you have to be unable to work for at least 12 months to qualify for Social Security disability and going on the program is a momentous step that effectively requires leaving the labor market, the still-new phenomenon that is Long Covid is probably not playing a big role (the Social Security Administration has said that only about 1% of recent claims mention Covid). Still, the turnaround in disability applications is at least not incompatible with a rise in long-term health problems related to the disease — and it turns out there are stronger signs of Long Covid in other employment-related data.

I started looking for them in part because I was dubious of some of the direct estimates of the scope of the phenomenon. With blood tests showing 58% of Americans infected with Covid-19 through February, studies finding that 10% (or 25% or 30% or 37% or 55%) of those with the disease develop long-term symptoms imply that 20 million to 100 million of us have Long Covid. An April attempt by the advocacy group Solve Long Covid Initiative to whittle that down to “disabling” cases still put the range at 7 million to 14 million, or 2.3% to 4.4% of U.S. adults. 

Given that labor-force-participation and employment rates in May were only about half a percentage point below where they were before the pandemic for prime-working-age adults (those aged 25 through 54), and above pre-pandemic levels for those aged 55 to 64, such estimates seem high. Still, dig a little deeper into the monthly Current Population Survey from which these statistics are derived and it is apparent that something new is ailing millions of Americans, even though many are staying on the job despite it. 

The Census Bureau, which conducts the 60,000-household CPS on behalf of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, asks about disabilities as well as employment. The resulting estimate of the number of 16-and-older Americans with a disability is up by about two million since early 2020. It had been rising over the decade before then as the population aged, but not at nearly that fast a pace.

These two million additional disabled Americans are divided almost equally between people who are in the labor force (that is, they’re employed or actively looking for a job) and people who aren’t. Since the latter group make up the great majority of the disabled, the increase in disability among those in the labor force has been much sharper in percentage terms.

That dip in disability in spring 2020 was likely not for real: Survey response rates plummeted in the early months of the pandemic, with lower-income households seeing the biggest drop, skewing the results. What’s happened since spring 2021, though, has the look of being driven by actual changes in health status. More than a million additional Americans, representing a 19% increase from before the pandemic, are complaining of a disability while continuing to work.

What’s ailing them? The six questions that Census Bureau survey takers ask to determine disability are:

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