Pandemic-fueled Technology Innovations Could Cost Millions of Jobs
- Author: Kelly Cooke
- Posted: 2024-02-03
On Friday, February 26, Investors Business Daily reported that the COVID-19 impact on the economy and its labor market will last for a long time. Even as the number of cases is going down and the number of vaccinations is on the rise, the American economy will have both short-term and long-term impacts, especially when it comes to jobs.
Infrastructure Spending Will Boost Short-term Jobs
The $1,400 stimulus check should grow the American economy and give a helping hand to retail jobs, restaurants and bars. The massive infrastructure spending should give a big boost to construction jobs. Many economists think that by the end of 2021, the American unemployment rate will be 4.5%. After the Great Recession, it took 10 years to reach that level of recovery.
How COVID-19 Will Affect Short-term Job Recovery
The shift to online grocery shopping and working from home caused a lot of employers to shift their business operations. Best Buy announced on February 24 that it laid off or shortened the hours of 5,000 employees. Walmart, Amazon and other large retailers have had a huge increase in online sales, and they've shifted employees to warehouses and fulfillment centers. Curbside pickup is also on the rise and likely to stay high, so retailers like Walmart and Kroger will continue doing brisk business.
Long-term Impact of COVID-19 on Jobs in the USA
Walmart, Amazon and General Motors are giants, but they were able to quickly capitalize on changes in consumer behavior. A growth in their productivity is likely to continue even after the COVID-19 pandemic fades away. However, some economists think that some essential jobs that were added during the pandemic will evaporate. For example, people who are sanitizing shopping carts and counting the number of patrons entering a store may end up losing their jobs or being asked to shift to a warehouse or fulfillment center.
Essential Workers May See Automation Take Their Jobs
The Instacart shoppers, Door Dashers and others may find that their low-tech work comes to an end sooner rather than later because of automation. Technology-led job disruption will come at a faster pace in the near future. That's because the acceleration of robotics investment and artificial intelligence will allow machines to do these tasks faster than people can do them. Machines don't show up to work late, take sick days or have to leave early in order to pick up a sick child from school. The requirements for social distancing and demands for fast service will only boost the attractiveness of automation at large retailers. Those large retailers can afford to invest in robots, machines and artificial intelligence.
Pandemic Rules Are Driving Disruption to the Job Market
The automation of large economic sectors is moving at a faster pace due to COVID-19. Even so, there are still a lot of technical challenges that have to be fixed. For now, companies are making the changes they can. Some economists predict that over the next 10 years, as many as 17 million low-wage jobs will be lost to automation. There are signs of this happening already. There are 8.7 million fewer American workers than there were one year ago. Payroll jobs are down by 9.9 million compared to February 2020. The 1.2 million gap in workers is the freelance population.
Freelancers Are Also in a Precarious Position
there were more than one million DoorDash delivery workers in the fourth quarter of 2020. They delivered more than 1.1 billion meals. Instacart doubled its workforce last year. In the first quarter of the pandemic, it added more than 300,000 shoppers. Another 250,000 Instacart shoppers joined the ranks in the past nine months. Online grocery shopping has surged. When restaurants closed, people had to buy groceries. They didn't want to risk going into a store, so they ordered their groceries online.
More Part-time Jobs at Large Retailers
People who lost their full-time jobs and couldn't find a new one to go to have had to take freelance work or part-time jobs. Walmart alone hired more than 500,000 additional workers in 2020, and most of them were part-time workers who don't qualify for benefits. Amazon also hired more than 500,000 new workers. It also added another 100 million square feet of warehouse space. Overall, eCommerce in the United States increased by 44% in 2020. It accounted for 21.3% of all retail sales, but auto sales were excluded from those figures.
