Russell Rhodes Blog

A Year Into This

Hire workers

A year into the Coronavirus pandemic. So much of our lives has changed. So much may never go back to the way it used to be.

We just don’t know.

A picture is beginning to emerge of the job market post-pandemic.

There’s an interesting piece at Fox Business. It’s a study that 1 in 10 U.S. workers may have to switch jobs by 2030 due to the impact of Covid-19.

The study was done by the McKinsey Global Institute. It shows that U.S. workers who will be hit the hardest are those without college degrees, minorities, women and young people.

Some of this impact was already happening, but the pandemic has caused this job loss and need for transition to increase dramatically.

So the question is how will it accelerate? What’s going on? The growth of remote work has a lot to do with it. A decrease in the demand for office space in cities is also affecting all aspects of business in big cities like restaurants and public transportation.

In the travel industry, business travel is expected to decline.

So, what’s a worker to do? Transition. Healthcare is expected to be huge as is STEM jobs—Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Somebody is going to need to design and fix all those robots. Automation and artificial intelligence are also expected to continue their dramatic increase in the workplace.

The economy is fragile right now. The Federal Reserve Chairman says the economic outlook is “highly uncertain.”

CNBC reports that Jerome Powell told the Senate Banking Committee that we are still a long way from employment and inflation goals.

He also said the Fed is “committed to using our full range of tools to support the economy and to help ensure that the recovery from this difficult period will be as robust as possible.”

Again, a year into this and so many questions. This pandemic will end. Let’s hope sooner than later. There are signs of that too. More vaccines. Fewer infections. Better days are coming. I’m sure of it.