If you’re like me, Thanksgiving was a totally different experience from any past Thanksgiving, except for the one I spent in Japan back in the ’90s. Somehow our hosts brought in a turkey for our group. Looking ahead, we all know how strange Christmas and New Year’s will be. Will Times Square be filled with people as the ball drops down? Hopefully not.
With news of successful COVID vaccine trials coming in, a lot of folks are getting hopeful for a return to normal in 2021. But a few articles in the Wall Street Journal this week have broached what “normal” will be in 2021. And it’s likely not going to be what normal was in 2019.
In an article titled “After Covid, ‘Normal’ Could Be Profoundly Different” (read here), the WSJ discusses the drastic changes we’ve seen and the impacts they may have. A big one? There are trillions of dollars in infrastructure in office buildings, cruise ships, airplanes, malls, and convention centers that—one—may not be used again and—two—if they are, may not be immediately safe to reoccupy.
Also mentioned was the loss of employment, both from businesses closing and from changes brought about by safety precautions that we’ll probably never return from. Not to mention the loss of skills from so many workers sitting idle for so long. Finally, many downtowns may never recover as businesses go remote and workers flock to the relatively spacious suburbs.
Don’t think a return to normal is going to involve running around to all the places you once did. It may take a while for those places to be there again. Besides… we’ve gotten used to being homebodies.
There was another article titled “Four Reasons The Stay-At-Home Economy Is Here To Stay” (read here). All the money that companies used to spend on rent and real estate? That went into e-commerce infrastructure, with more and more big Amazon warehouses all over the place. McKinsey, the big consulting firm, estimates we had 10 years’ worth of e-commerce adoption (online shopping) compressed into three months beginning in March. On both the corporate and consumer sides.
Also, we’ve all gotten used to the new home-based conveniences we used to have to go out for. From $2,000 Internet-connected exercise bikes replacing gym memberships to bartender-blended cocktails dropped off to our door in gallon jugs. How many of us are cooking more at home? As someone who ate out almost every night, I now cook probably 5 nights a week. Chinese takeout the other two.
Finally, the job market changed. This country lost a lot of jobs during the shutdown, and folks found work catering to these stay-at-home conveniences. There are a lot more delivery drivers than there used to be. And many companies have decided that employees working from home works for them. Between Zoom, Slack, and Teams remote connections, and a host of other new work-oriented solutions, working from home seems to be working.
2021 is going to look drastically different than how we started off this year.