It could be.
It could also be that some people who would have left in 2020/21 didn’t because of the various lockdowns, but had we been operating as usual would have been natural wastage.
We then get the double blip of them leaving and the impact of no one joining during the Covid period.
Absent of exit interviews or a detailed survey there’s no way to know.
But my feeling - and I can only go on my gut and what I’ve seen locally - is that the decline may have started before Covid and we might have seen a smaller YOY drop spread out over more years if it weren’t for lockdowns.
We’d still be where we are now in terms of leavers but maybe a bit better off if we’d been able to recruit or keep staff cadets.