It is no doubt that the global economy is one of the biggest victims of the coronavirus pandemic. The International Monetary Fund claims “that the world is facing its worst downturn since the Great Depression as shuttered factories, quarantines and national lockdowns cause economic output to collapse,”(Rappeport, Smialek). The original projection for the economy in 2020 was a 3.3 percent growth, but has been recently revised to project a 3 percent contraction. Compared to the last recession in 2008, which was a less than a one percent contraction, the one to come will be far more severe. The fact that a pandemic destroys the global economy so drastically has created an incentive among many companies and business to not let it happen again. There are many changes that businesses plan to exercise once this quarantine is over in order to protect against severe losses from an other pandemic. The general public should be prepared to see drastic changes to their working conditions.

For one, the nature of meetings in businesses will possibly be changed to not involve as much human-to-human contact. Rather than congregating in meeting rooms, “More meetings will become emails, and more emails will become instant messages,”(Connley, Hess, Liu). This would be beneficial due to the fact that all information can be instantly delivered to every recipient, and serve as a memory, incase any points from the meeting were forgotten. The downside to this, obviously, is the lack of human interaction, and more focus on individualism, rather than teamwork. However, due to the distance between workers, virtual meetings will be encouraged for team projects.

After the world has seen what mass congregation can do in terms of spreading a disease, it will be common to be more skeptical about human interaction. It will bring more fear than joy. For this reason, it is a possibility that more professions be replaced by computers, or at least people behind computers. We have been lucky in that “For a blessed century, Western cities have been healthy,”(Glaeser). In that time, we have not had to worry about how employees interact with patrons. For that reason, jobs like retail workers, waiters, and many more jobs that have high interpersonal contact are able to be held by humans. However, “If pandemics become the new normal, then tens of millions of urban service jobs will disappear,”(Glaeser). There is a real scary possibility that computers or robots replace those workers to decrease contact among people while also reducing the risk of failure for many small businesses.

However, during this pandemic, it has been observed that productivity goes up when working remotely. “A two-year study from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which followed office workers at China’s largest travel agency, found that people who worked from home showed a 13% improvement in performance compared to those who worked in an office,”(Sweeney). It shows that remote workers work an average of 1.4 days more per week because they take small breaks which boosts productivity, (Sweeney). So, although there is a possibility of less work in office buildings and in retail, it is expected that productivity goes up when working remotely.

When the isolation from the coronavirus pandemic is over, we expect to still see some practices of social distancing still being enforced in the workplace. But, rather than having a workplace, many people will be living from home.

Works Cited

Alan Rappeport and Jeanna Smialek. “I.M.F. Predicts Worst Downturn Since the Great Depression.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 14 Apr. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/us/politics/coronavirus-economy-recession-depression.html.

Courtney Connley, Abigail Hess, and Jennifer Liu. “13 Ways the Coronavirus Pandemic Could Forever Change the Way We Work.” CNBC, CNBC, 29 Apr. 2020, www.cnbc.com/2020/04/29/how-the-coronavirus-pandemic-will-impact-the-future-of-work.html.

Glaeser, Edward. “How Life in Our Cities Will Look After the Coronavirus Pandemic.” Foreign Policy, 1 May 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/01/future-of-cities-urban-life-after-coronavirus-pandemic/.

Sweeney, Erica. “What If the Coronavirus Makes Us Work from Home Forever?” Money, 2 Apr. 2020, https://money.com/coronavirus-work-from-home-forever/