* Chief Economist at Grant Thornton and adviser to the Federal Reserve…

* Gov. Pritzker was asked today about the topic of getting people back to work…

I think there are a variety of things. Look, the pandemic is still with us. For those who’ve been vaccinated, the impact, the effect is much less than it was. For many people who have not been vaccinated yet, they need to get vaccinated, and we want to make sure that everybody gets back to work.

But it’s reasonable for people to feel somewhat concerned, as they have for the last 15 months, that getting back to work might be a difficult endeavor for them with the pandemic still upon us. We want people to get vaccinated so that they’ll get back to work. But I just want to point out, that’s one reason that people haven’t gotten back to work, still a concern, a fear, perhaps, that they might get COVID, or that others who enter a location might have COVID. So that’s one thing.

A second is that there are many, many women who, particularly women, who chose not to go back into the workforce yet, in fact, they stepped out of the workforce to take care of their children, or an elderly parent or someone else. And they’re still doing that. And it’s difficult for them, as childcare is still ramping back up, to find the childcare that they need, so that they can go out and get a job. So that’s another portion of people.

And then, I think that there may be people who are on unemployment right now, and who aren’t able to find a job that pays enough for them to pay their bills. Now, there’s, again, those three things are working together, perhaps, to keep some people from seeking out jobs.

But I would say that a lot of people are getting back to work a lot of people. And the fact that there’s so much sort of help wanted out there that help wanted signs are everywhere, is a great sign for the future of the economy of our state. And I’m looking forward, frankly, to people getting back to work as they have been over the number of months since January since people started getting vaccinated.

* Getting childcare ain’t easy for those same three reasons. Also, add in a demand shift…

A Bureau of Labor Statistics analysis shows that the child care workforce is down 15% from pre-pandemic to now, a significant challenge for the 16% of the overall workforce — or 26.8 million people — who depend on child care to work. Roughly 35% of child care workers were laid off in the early stages of the pandemic, says Rasheed Malik, senior policy analyst for Early Childhood Policy for the Center for American Progress (CAP), and only about half of those have returned in the last nine months.

There were hopes that more workers would come back as states prioritized child care workers for early vaccinations, but re-hiring has lagged. Malik believes that in an uncertain economy — with workers unsure they want to return to low-wage jobs and incentives offered in other industries — the staffing dilemma has become worse.

Part of the problem comes from a dramatic demand shift. Winnie, an online platform for finding child care, analyzed requests for care between February 2020 and 2021 among its network of 200,000 locations, and found a striking disparity between suburban and urban locations. Demand for open slots in child care centers had dropped in downtowns and big cities, meaning a big jump in available capacity, while many wealthy suburbs have seen demand for care skyrocket, shrinking capacity. Child care is a slow-moving, highly regulated industry — one can’t simply open up a new location overnight — so even small demand and population shifts disrupt a tenuous equilibrium.

“In suburban markets, families are searching, but new supply doesn’t exist, so it’s harder to get a spot,” says Sara Mauskopf, CEO of Winnie.

The shifts were consistent across the nation’s 10 largest metros; demand for care was down in urban centers and downtowns, and sharply up in more-distant suburban areas. (In the Bay Area, however, there was lower demand in urban and suburban locations across the board.) Take the Chicago metro area; in the city and Evanston, a neighboring suburb to the north with a large student population, the demand-to-supply ratio plunged 236% and 120%, respectively, while in areas further from the city, such as Naperville and Bolingbrook, it grew 57% and 52%.

* Related…

* Stimulus Checks Substantially Reduced Hardship, Study Shows: A new analysis of Census Bureau surveys argues that the two latest rounds of aid significantly improved Americans’ ability to buy food and pay household bills and reduced anxiety and depression, with the largest benefits going to the poorest households and those with children. The analysis offers the fullest look at hardship reduction under the stimulus aid.

* Despite vaccines, nursing homes struggle with outbreaks: COVID-19 vaccines have allowed nursing homes in the U.S. to make dramatic progress since the dark days of the pandemic, but senior care facilities are still experiencing scattered outbreaks that are largely blamed on unvaccinated staff members.

* As some mass COVID-19 vaccination sites close, next stage is doctor’s offices: New rules for storing Pfizer’s vaccine make that shift easier, Lake County’s public health chief explained.

* Illinois planning to offer a lottery for vaccinated residents