The stark reality of jobs post-pandemic COVID-19

The pandemic COVID-19 started in China, while the rest of the world remained oblivious to the crises ahead which could change the course of history. Neither world wars nor 9/11 have impacted the world economy to this extent, but a virus brought the whole world to its knees. Now is the perfect occasion to juxtapose a virus to the world’s stockpile of weapons.

In India, the news of job cuts and slowing down of the economy were all around the corner especially in the automobile sector before the pandemic was even started. But it exacerbated this and took other sectors to its control. As the government had only one arsenal of lockdown to stop this virus from spreading, it resulted in zero demand and break-in consumption cycle which affected most of the manufacturing, IT, travel and hospitality sectors. Further, with no generation of wealth, the only options for the big firms were to shoulder the burden with its employees. This led to emotional and distress emails of job cuts, sacking of employees, asking employees to take long leaves without salaries and slashing of salaries up to 60%. The reports suggest that the job cuts of 15-20% is on the anvil. If the arithmetic and calculation goes right the numbers tot up to 100 million jobless people post-pandemic.

Further, more to it is the highly impacted aviation and hospitality sector. For these sectors, there is no hope as the people will find fear to travel until the vaccines are not made. The carelessness and selfishness of the government to benefit capitalists by not providing hapless migrant workers with proper transportation to their home destination have put them in grave danger as they will be fearful in rejoining the manufacturing industry. This roadblock can create high inefficiency and low production, resulting in inflation.

After, the lockdown is over the government has a herculean task to achieve. But there is beacon hope which could help India to normalcy. The expert suggests that India will have a U-Shaped recovery with a lower plateau period of 3-4 months. The raison d'etre that India will achieve equilibrium early then the rest of the world because it is less dependent on exports, 50-60% of GDP is domestic consumption. The government just needs to bridge a solution to provide cash in hand for informal workers by schemes like MGNREGA and monetary stimulus to business so that they could revive the consumption cycle. And, if the government could encash on companies leaving China, it would create job opportunities shortly and help India revive and strengthen its economy.

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