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17 dads in 2021, up 8% since 1989. But this would only explain a sliver of the decline in prime-age working men who have left the workforce. A new study from the Fed- eral Reserve Bank of Boston links the exit of men without college degrees from the labor force to a decline in social status related to an expected fall in earnings rel- ative to the earnings of other workers in the labor market. Some workers might be out of the workforce because of health issues. The Census Bureau's real-time Household Pulse Survey started asking adults about "long COVID-19" in 2022. Roughly 7 million adults not in the workforce say they are currently affected by long COVID. At the same time, for those reporting long-COVID-asso- ciated issues, the number who reported COVID ill- ness as the reason they were out of the workforce was only 700,000. This included those who were out of the workforce to care for someone else. Others have likely exited the workforce because their home situation has changed. The number of childcare providers in the U.S. has declined by nearly 100,000 workers since the start of the pan- demic. The number of available childcare providers is down roughly 7.5%, while the overall number of workers is up approximately 1%. Since the start of the pandemic there has also been a large decline in available workers who are 55 years or older. Labor force participation rates for this group had held steady for the 12 years prior to the pandemic and had risen strongly before that. But since the pandemic, labor force participation among this group has declined about 4.4% or nearly two percentage points. If this shift continues, and these workers remain out of the labor force, it could be easily challenging for the electronics industry. The average age in the electronics manufacturing sector is about 45 years old, but over a quarter of the workforce is over 55. In other words, about 425,000 workers are over 55. A decline of just 5% would mean the industry needs to find over 20,000 new workers. The forces impacting labor force participation appear to be especially impactful to workers with less than a college degree. Labor force participa- tion rates among workers with a college degree has roughly recovered to pre-pandemic levels. For those without a college degree, participation levels are still down about 5%. Implications Despite a slowing economy, it does not appear that U.S. labor scarcities will improve significantly anytime soon. Perhaps older Americans will return to the workforce after a period of retirement. Per- haps prime-wage workers will return as childcare options improve. Perhaps even higher wages will coax workers back to work. But none of these will likely solve the economy's, and the industry's, full employment needs in the coming years. Companies will likely need to look at a mix of solutions to solve labor shortages including auto- mation, training options, and perhaps new bene- fits and employee services that meet the needs of tomorrow's workforce. 17 Chart 3: Labor force participation rate (55+). Chart 4: Labor force participation rates with no college (orange) vs. bachelor's degree or higher (blue).