I tend to think it will never recover. Finding adequate/enough labor to fill the void to produce the same amount of 'things' like it was pre-Covid probably will never happen again.
I have spoken with many of my customers who tend to be well versed in this, and their general thoughts are the 'maturity' of the pre-Covid workforce that left the void cannot be filled with the aptitude & work-ethic of the new generations. The typical 30 year old and younger employee candidates do not possess the skillset to be trainable. The majority of this age group lack problem solving skills, mechanical aptitude, and brain to hand coordination. IMO, the two major things that created this deficiency stems from my generation never trained them how to work with their hands (mow the grass, use hand tools, use a hammer or a saw, etc.) so they are very naïve in this area. Secondly, this newer generation has used the smart phone and computers to do their critical thinking, and their brain has never been developed to solve problems or think logically in an industrial environment. The length of time along with the costs associated with training these younger employees are just too costly for most companies to absorb.
Therefore, companies that were used to manufacturing something (raw goods, semi-finished goods, or finished goods) had been forced to operate their companies' profit margins on a 'lean level' where they were producing a certain quantity of products and amortizing the entire company's operating costs over all 100% of the products they produced. With the labor shortage after Covid, most of these companies have found themselves operating with a reduced workforce and/or a limited supply chain where they could no longer manufacture the same amount as pre-Covid. Their expenses however, did not drop. So if they are now working with a less-efficient workforce, higher COG pricing, and available supplies of around 50% of before, the only way way they could survive in business was to raise their prices. Now because a hypothetical company can only produce 50% as much product, they had to raise their retail costs by 100% and build their new business-model around a 50% production output. For some companies, they now can only produce about one-forth (25%) of what they were producing pre-Covid, ...and for those businesses, the lack of operating capitol and workforce will likely keep them crippled where they will never survive.
So to answer your question one more time, the likelihood of it ever getting better to a point where it was pre-Covid will never happen. How it affects this hobby is fewer & fewer Model-As are being repaired or restored. Most are just being driven into the ground. The overall prices of level of Model-A are dropping because the quality of the average vehicle is less than what was available a couple of decades ago. Fortunately, the prices of nice Model-As that are mechanically & aesthetically sound are rising, because there just isn't enough of that level of Model-As to go around, ...but that is a whole other topic.
