FUTURE OF WORK
2020 was a torrid year for the world’s workers. What will a post-pandemic labour market look like? In 2020 Covid-19 destroyed millions of jobs around the globe. According to The Economist, it caused a drop in employment that was 14 times bigger than the one brought on by the financial crisis of a decade ago. Unemployment skyrocketed, with low-skilled workers bearing the brunt, as well as essential services workers who had to continue travelling to and from their workplaces even through the harshest lockdowns. While the short-term consequences of this major disruption of the global labour market were severe and almost immediate – with millions of people either being furloughed or losing their jobs, or having to adjust to
working from home as offices closed – the long-term changes that Covid-19 may impose on work are less clear. A special report by the McKinsey Global Institute1 – which examines how the trends accelerated by the pandemic may shape work in the long term – explores changes through to 2030 across several work arenas in eight diverse countries that account for almost half the global population: China, France, Germany, India, Spain, the UK and the United States.
PHYSICAL PROXIMITY
Jobs that require a high level of physical proximity are most likely
1 The future of work after Covid-19, McKinsey Global Institute
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STATE OF CAPE TOWN CENTRAL CITY REPORT 2020
to be disrupted or transformed and will trigger knock-on effects in other work arenas. Physical attributes of work include closeness to customers and co-workers, frequency of human interactions required, whether the work is indoors, and whether it requires an on-site presence. The report indicates that during the pandemic in 2020 the virus most severely disrupted these work arenas: medical care, personal care, on-site customer service in retail and hospitality, and leisure and travel.
ACCELERATING TRENDS
The report notes that Covid-19 accelerated three “groups of trends” that may persist after the pandemic
