When the pandemic first hit, Celeste Lyons quit her job at a law firm in Connecticut and started to hunker down at home, living off retirement savings and an inheritance from her parents as she tried to avoid getting sick. She wanted to work again eventually, but nearly two years went by before Lyons, 63, started a new gig as a real estate analyst — a position that allows her to work from home when Covid cases spike.

"I got tired of spending my retirement money. I thought, 'I've got to pad my account,' " Lyons says of her decision to return to work. Plus, she adds, during all that time at home, "I just got bored out of my skull."