Gerd Leonhard says the pandemic has led to the widespread adoption of remote work practices.
The speed with which the world of work has changed since the introduction of coronavirus restrictions has been breathtaking, even for futurists whose job it is to anticipate developments ahead of the pack.
Key points:
Even futurists are having to adapt to the changes brought on by COVID-19
But they say those changes will create an opening for a raft of new jobs
Black swan scenario planners and privacy guardians are two examples
COVID-19 has disrupted our world in big and small ways. We have shut down as a nation to save lives. We watch the news and hear of deaths in the hundreds and thousands and wonder if we are at the peak yet. Simple acts, such as going to the grocery store or walking the dog, have become significant sources of anxiety. Food insecurity has intensified as increasing lines at food banks demonstrate. We have new respect for service workers. We cheer our new heroes, the first responders, doctors, and nurses who are our frontline soldiers in this war.
And we celebrate our teachers, but we have ignored university professors, who have also had to refocus the way they teach, do research and spread knowledge.
Higher education as a sector is getting hammered. Our national focus is rightly on the current frontline health providers. But we need to realize that despite some federal funding, many universities and colleges may never recover from COVID-19.
Will COVID-19 deepen the retirement crisis? Yes and no — here’s how
The coronavirus crisis may worsen an already impending retirement crisis.
Remember when Americans struggled to save for retirement because they were juggling high housing costs, student loan payments, credit card debt and scanty access to workplace savings? Add in a global pandemic, record unemployment and an economic lockdown. How’s that for a retirement crisis?
The coronavirus poses a threat to many Americans’ health and current financial well-being, but it also has the potential to derail an individual’s future retirement security.
Many Americans were already underprepared for retirement, not having saved enough for their futures by the time they were ready to leave the workforce. The global pandemic may make it even harder to afford to retire. In the past four weeks alone, 22 million U.S. workers have filed for unemployment benefits, and people without jobs are not able to contribute to their workplace investment accounts, nor do they have any extra money to put away. People may also have to take distributions or loans from their retirement plans, which lowers their potential returns in the long-run.
Having an unoccupied vehicle deliver your food makes a lot more sense now.
Delivery robots helped deliver food and medicine in Wuhan, China, during the coronavirus-related quarantine.
In the United States, autonomous shuttles from the French company NAVYA have been repurposed as delivery robots to transport COVID-19 tests.
Most of these delivery robots still have human controllers keeping track of them and driving them when needed.
While the Wuhan district in China was under quarantine, news surfaced of robots delivering food and, later, medical supplies. Meanwhile, in the United States, the French company NAVYA configured its autonomous passenger shuttles in Florida to transport COVID-19 tests to the Mayo Clinic from off-site test locations. As the weeks of stay-at-home orders and recommendations slip into months, the delivery robots that were seen as a joke, fad, or nuisance have in some instances found a way into the public consciousness as important tools to combat the spread of coronavirus. The question is, will their usefulness extend post-lockdown?
Save 28% on a device that you can use to press buttons, open doors and pull levers. If only 2018 could see us now.
Since the start of the coronavirus, I’ve had the immortal words of Sgt. Apone ringing in my head, when he admonished the Colonial Marines in the movie Aliens: “Nobody touch nothin’.” Good advice when exploring a deserted space colony, and good advice when venturing outdoors during a global pandemic. I never imagined I’d ever write these words, but here goes: If you want to avoid having to press buttons, open doors and generally touch stuff with your bare hands, add a hand tool to your key ring. Right now, you can get CleanKey’s Antimicrobial Brass Hand Tool for $18 when you use discount code CHEAP10 at checkout.
The world may soon pass “peak virus.” But true recovery will take years—and the ripple effects will be seismic. Parag Khanna and Karan Khemka forecast the aftershocks.
In chaos theory, the butterfly effect describes a small change that can have massive, unpredictable consequences. An insect flaps its wings and, weeks later, causes a tornado.
The coronavirus is more like an earthquake, with aftershocks that will permanently reshape the world.
If we are lucky, the world will pass “peak virus” within the next six months. But the economy, governments, and social institutions will take years to recover in the best-case scenario. Indeed, rather than even speak of “recovery,” which implies a return to how things were, it would be wise to project what new direction civilization will take. That too will be a bumpy ride. The next 3-5 years will remind us that COVID-19 was the lightning before the thunder
With the pandemic in full-force all around the United States, there’s been a massive shift not only in where we work but in how we work.
While it’s true that remote work is challenging and there is a new reality for most, some employment categories will likely see an upswing in terms of greater needs, more positions available, and even higher pay.
These jobs will be in particularly high demand over the next few weeks and months.
Hundreds of meat plant workers across the country have fallen ill with the coronavirus, leading to a slowdown in output and surge in prices.
By the numbers, per Bloomberg: The price of wholesale pork rose by 7.2% to 55.86 cents a pound Thursday — the largest increase in more than two years. Choice-grade beef prices rose to a one-month high of $2.36 a pound, climbing for six straight days through Thursday.
Bond Capital, a Silicon Valley VC firm whose portfolio companies include Slack and Uber, told its investors this morning via email that the coronavirus’ high-speed spread and impact has similarities to the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
Why it matters: Bond’s best-known partner, Mary Meeker, is a former bank analyst renowned for her annual Internet Trends Report, which many investors and entrepreneurs use as a touchstone for where tech is now and where it’s going. Today’s 28-page report to Bond’s limited partners, obtained by Axios, shares some structural similarities.
Just finding space to park can be a problem, and idle planes require a surprising amount of work, from maintaining hydraulics to stopping birds from nesting.
The skies are eerily empty these days, presenting a new challenge for the world’s embattled airlines as they work to safeguard thousands of grounded planes parked wingtip to wingtip on runways and in storage facilities.
More than 16,000 passenger jets are grounded worldwide, according to industry researcher Cirium, as the coronavirus obliterates travel and puts unprecedented strain on airline finances. Finding the right space and conditions for 62% of the world’s planes and keeping them airworthy have suddenly become priorities for 2020.
Aircraft can’t simply be dusted back into action. They need plenty of work and attention while in storage, from maintenance of hydraulics and flight-control systems to protection against insects and wildlife — nesting birds can be a problem. Then there’s humidity, which can corrode parts and damage interiors. Even when parked on runways, planes are often loaded with fuel to keep them from rocking in the wind and to ensure tanks stay lubricated.
When you think about wearable tech, chances are that your mind goes to a device like the Apple Watch long before it does the Band-Aid-style smart patch developed by Epicore Biosystems. But the company, which spun out of Northwestern University’s Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics and professor John A. Rogers’ laboratory, has been hard at work creating sweat-sensing smart patches which could be used to help measure sweat components in athletes and a variety of other individuals — and could even have potential application for medical use in helping keep tabs on crucial biomarkers for patients suffering from COVID-19.
“We have [created] two versions of the wearable sensor patch in development suitable across different applications,” Roozbeh Ghaffari, Epicore’s CEO and co-founder, told Digital Trends. “One is a color-changing wearable microfluidics patch used by athletes. The other is a Bluetooth-enabled patch that tracks the sweat biomarkers of workers in construction, on oil rigs, and in factories, plus other physically intense occupations — for the ‘industrial athletes.’”
An unintended and unexpected consequence of the multitrillion dollar stimulus package is that workers are asking to be laid off or reluctant to go back to work after being furloughed.
In an effort to help people financially cope with their job losses in the midst of a pandemic, the federal government—through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act)—is providing an extra $600 per week in unemployment benefits. This amount is in addition to what the states already pay, which is in the range of $200 to $300 per week.
A person could conceivably earn $1,000 per week on unemployment, depending upon the state he or she resides in. In addition to the enhanced benefits, most Americans, earning less than $75,000 in 2019, received a one-time check for $1,200 and $500 for each child under 17 years of age.
Here’s the situation facing companies that have already been financially hurt by the consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak. Consider a worker in an Amazon warehouse. The worker has to be on their feet all day, lift heavy boxes onto and off of high shelves and race around the facility to fulfill orders. Earning a minimum wage of $15 per hour, the person may make pre-tax $525 per week. Think of how many millions of other people work at dangerous, physically demanding or unpleasant jobs earning a similar amount.
