Creative Fields: Journalism

Over drinks on a recent rainy, early-Fall evening in Soho, the chief executive of a rapidly growing tech firm was debating the merits of leasing office space for a new global headquarters in Manhattan with an executive from a major stock exchange. Her company’s business was surging thanks to the peculiarities of the pandemic economy and large customers such as Amazon, and she had been on a hiring spree, snapping up tech workers in San Francisco, New York and Tel Aviv. The growth had translated into globe hopping travel for her as well. Wouldn’t it be nice to get everyone together in one place? But was it worth the price? And did anyone besides her actually want it?

Unwelcome and unexplained specters seem to lurk everywhere these days. The Covid-19 pandemic, while ostensibly on the wane in nations with easy access to vaccines, continues to sow volatility and uncertainty in people’s lives and the markets, and the new Delta variant has many worried about another winter of isolation. Meanwhile, businesses large and small continue to post physical and digital “help wanted” signs without results. From investment bankers to dishwashers, there suddenly seems to be a dearth of talent. A grim spectator might conclude that a labor shortage could be related to the death of more than half a million Americans. It’s not that simple.

The coronavirus pandemic has already changed the world. The human tragedy is almost unfathomable, and its economic impacts continue to reverberate. Virtually overnight in March 2020, millions of workers shifted to entirely remote ways of working, and businesses that depend on frontline workers—from retailers to restaurants to factories—were forced to implement layoffs and new safety measures in the face of a raging virus and economic downturn.