AMNA NAWAZ: Well, the COVID pandemic had impacts both big and small.

One unexpected effect?

A bit of a baby boom.

It's the first major reversal in declining us fertility rates since 2007.

Special correspondent and "Washington Post" columnist Catherine Rampell reports on the surprise pandemic baby bump.

(SINGING) CATHERINE RAMPELL: If Noellia Hernandez sounds unusually professional when singing to her 18-month-old daughter, Emerson, that's because she is.

Just a few short years ago, she was performing in front of a bigger audience with Broadway aspirations.

NOELLIA HERNANDEZ, Mother: So I was like, OK, this is my year.

I just got new headshots, I just had like a great meeting with my agent, and I'm going to go for it.

I'm going to get this dream job.

And then the pandemic hit.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: And her career was put on pause.

NOELLIA HERNANDEZ: I spoke to my agent.

She said: "I'm going to be real.

Theaters are probably closed for at least a year.

If I were you, I would think about what else you want to be doing during this time."

And so we looked at each other.

And I said: "Well, we have another nine months.

So should we have a baby right now?

Is this the time?

It's never been right because I didn't want to have to stop auditioning."

I love you.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: We put Noellia center stage, but this trend extends well off Broadway too.

NOELLIA HERNANDEZ: Can you say grapes?

CATHERINE RAMPELL: She's part of the pandemic baby boom.

Even in my own social circle, seemingly, everyone had a baby these past two years.

This was unexpected.

For many years, birth rates had been trending downwards, but especially when the economy was weak.

MARTHA BAILEY, UCLA Economist: In all of the recessions in recent history, birth rates have gone down pretty dramatically as the economy has contracted.

People delay the children until times are better.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: UCLA economist Martha Bailey.

MARTHA BAILEY: What's so interesting about the pandemic recession is that, instead of birth rates falling, they actually went on to rise.

It's not a big increase, I should say.

A lot of people say, oh, this is just a blip.

That's true.

But what's surprising is that, instead of seeing missing births, a massive decline, we have actually seen a slight increase, which surprised all of us.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: Possible reasons for the baby bump?

Stimulus checks and other government supports made this recession less financially painful.

And people's priorities changed.

AMY AZIMI, Mother: I got pregnant when I was on the IUD.

But I think, under normal circumstances, that would have -- we would have taken it a little bit differently.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: Amy Azimi and Shelton Metcalf (ph) were using birth control.

They had not been dating long, but it was an intense period, since they were stuck at home.

AMY AZIMI: Kind of our values to start to change, even though we were dating.

Before, if we were going to go out to the bar and drink, now we were spending nights at home cooking.

SHELTON METCALF, Father: Without COVID, we probably would have done a lot more... AMY AZIMI: Taking the long route.

SHELTON METCALF: Yes.

AMY AZIMI: Yes.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: Suddenly, they were on the fast track.

AMY AZIMI: I asked Shelton: "What if I'm pregnant?

Do you want to keep the baby?

: And he says: "I don't know, maybe not."

Woke up.

It was a Friday, tested, and it was positive.

And I was like, uh-oh.

SHELTON METCALF: You also had to immediately go to your doctor.

AMY AZIMI: Yes, I had to go, because I had an IUD and knew that was going to be a little tricky.

I was just exhausted from the day.

And so I took a nap on the couch.

And I woke up to him quietly crying on the couch with a smile on his face.

And he says -- he looks at me and says: "I'm going to be a dad."

(LAUGHTER) AMY AZIMI: So that was sweet.

And along came baby Monduna (ph).

One factor that made the idea of becoming parents less daunting, their work lives had changed.

SHELTON METCALF: Before COVID, I was traveling quite a lot.

That went to zero.

AMY AZIMI: I was teaching.

You're getting up to get there before the kids, staying after the kids.

It doesn't leave a whole lot of room to do much else.

SHELTON METCALF: You would just come home and go to sleep, right?

AMY AZIMI: Yes.

SHELTON METCALF: When you were teaching in the classroom.

AMY AZIMI: Yes.

SHELTON METCALF: And then, then all of a sudden, the next day, you could to get up and wear sweatpants.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: When schools returned to in-person instruction, Amy ultimately decided to become a consultant, so she could continue working remotely.

AMY AZIMI: To still have that aspect of me that likes to work and wants to have a career, but also be able to balance my family.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: The broader shift to remote work may help partly explain the national baby bump, says Bailey.

MARTHA BAILEY: A lot of people were working from home, especially the more educated women, and we thought that this workplace flexibility may have played a role in their ability to both have children and maintain their busy work lives.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: Women with college degrees are more likely to be in white-collar careers that can go remote.

MARTHA BAILEY: There's a big educational divide.

So women with more education were the ones that were having a lot more children, so exceeding trends and actually increasing their birth rates.

Women with less than a college education, we not only saw their birth rates go down, but they have barely recovered to trend by the end of 2021.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: The uptick was more pronounced for first-time parents too.

Those who already had kids had a lot to deal with.

MARTHA BAILEY: The closure of childcare, the closure of schools, remote schooling for their kids, those things were tricky.

That was not the right time to expand your family.

On the other hand, a lot of people without children didn't have those same constraints.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: So, people who were already trapped at home with a toddler or a kindergartner, they said... MARTHA BAILEY: Or two.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: ... no mas.

MARTHA BAILEY: It doesn't look like they said, oh, sure.

Let's have another.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: Newfound work flexibility is a key reason why Callie (ph) became a mom.

CALLIE, Mother: We had been before the pandemic long distance and trying to figure out how to get into the same city.

And we were both able to work from home.

And that actually allowed us to be in the same place.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: Before Isaac was born, Callie had been living in Seattle for work and then moved back East.

Within the span of a year, she and her partner got married, bought a house and started their family.

CALLIE: I think the pandemic accelerated everything by like five years for us, probably.

We were both really focused on our careers.

We were like in a very different life stage before.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: She eventually transferred to an office closer to her now husband and has continued working remotely, for now.

CALLIE: They are actually requiring us to return four days a week.

So I will be going back into an office.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: And Callie isn't alone.

MELISSA KEARNEY, University of Maryland: We're in a transition period.

And we don't know what companies or firms are going to be saying even a year from now.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: The University of Maryland's Melissa Kearney says birth rates are key to understanding what happens to the labor market and the broader economy.

MELISSA KEARNEY: If every woman is having a little bit more than two kids, on average, then our native population stays constant.

We are now down to total fertility rates, the expected number of kids a woman will have over her lifetime is closer to 1.6.

So that's substantially below replacement level fertility.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: Why does that matter?

MELISSA KEARNEY: It matters because, absent a large increase in immigration, this means that in the not-too-distant future, our working-age population is going to shrink.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: Among other things, fewer people working means fewer people paying taxes to support retirement programs.

MELISSA KEARNEY: If our fertility remains at a level of 1.66, as opposed to 2.1, then that means that Social Security benefits are going to have to be cut by more, or payroll taxes are going to have to increase by more than current projections would say.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: To us, these may look just like cute toddlers, but, to economists, they're critical future workers.

And that's a reason to celebrate.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Catherine Rampell.