Paradigm shifts. That’s what this entire year has been: an extravagant change of lifestyle from hectic chaos where you’re running helter-skelter around the city, to hectic chaos from one virtual meeting to another. Two words here are similar, though, right? Chaos reigns in both situations, so how are they different?
It comes down to productivity; how effectively and how efficiently we work. In regular, pre-covid life, we would spend at least one-third of the working day driving from one office in the east of the city to another in the west. Traffic wasted so many valuable, billable hours.
On the other hand, it’s merely a matter of seconds to click one link to join one meeting from another for online conferences. One can finish an appointment and have a second conference lined up for 5 minutes after. Naturally, with such short buffer-breaks in between, the number of clients that a firm can address in a day has increased significantly.
A survey conducted by Microsoft Teams reported that the new record for virtual conferences is 2.7 billion minutes in one day, a 200% increase from before. Although these virtual platforms run the risk of hackers gaining information, over 200 million people use Zoom only in a single day.
Productivity has increased drastically, and the economy is seeing higher revenue in a large array of industries. However, millions of people across the globe have lost their sources of income. Low-income earners were especially hard hit with the early onset of the virus. People stopped eating out and travelling, and corner joints and airlines had to find a way to keep their business afloat, especially when they were surviving solely based on their savings. This is the first time the economy has faced such a large employment structure change since the Great Depression.
All is not lost, however. While some business sank, others rose into the sky and some even higher into outer space. What the economy lost from the entertainment industry, it gained from the sanitation industry. Masks, gloves, and sanitisers adjusted prices to become almost double of what they used to be, and entire sectors of fashionable masks and fancy sanitisers were birthed.
Online businesses have flourished more than anyone. Social media platforms saw over an 87% increase in users during the lockdown, as more and more people connected using these online mediums. Thousands of people have followed their hearts and set their passions to motion, creating Instagram accounts to showcase their talents in the culinary, artistic, or other fields altogether.
The work-from-home phase certainly has boosted the economy, but it widens the gap between the rich and the poor, and that’s a significant problem area for any economy. Yes, the country’s GDP may increase, but the people who have the skill to start small businesses are not usually the same as those who barely make a living at a local diner. Even affording the basic capital to start a small business is not something everyone has access to.
From a macroeconomic perspective, this situation has boosted aggregate demand for various industries, but countless households have lost their only sources of income. This pandemic has posed many challenges to individuals and businesses worldwide, and most governments have taken the necessary measures to reverse the onslaught caused by the virus. Masks have become a part of our body, and this is the new normal. Even after the vaccine, there’s a low chance that we will return to life exactly as we knew it. What we can do, however, is be more conscious of our surroundings and the lives of others around us. Let us remember that though there is a virus going on, the other virus is ignorance, and it’s time we become aware of the world around us.
