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The State of Recovery

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The US lost 22 million jobs at the start of the pandemic. In the most recent jobs report (March), the US economy created 916,000 new jobs and pushed the unemployment rate down from 6.2% to 6%. With the economic recovery picking up steam, new questions arise. How even will the recovery be across ethnicities? Across industries? What issues will the recovery create? This pandemic has affected some groups more severely, so recoveries in those areas are particularly important to smooth the shock. The travel and hospitality industry was one of the worst hit by the pandemic and is still 3 million jobs short of pre-pandemic levels. Google search activity indicates that a summer travel boom is in the making, though, as resort and hotel searches are at decade highs. The gains of this summer will mainly be limited to vaccinated destinations though, leaving poorer, tourism-dependent countries behind. Tourism will bring jobs back to travel hub cities enduring an exodus of residents. Broadway, for e...
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The Fever-Pitched Housing Market

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In parallel with a historic spike in unemployment, the pandemic also turbo-charged the housing marking. The median house price in the US has boomed to record levels, exceeding its former 2006 peak. This surge has arisen from widespread work from home policies, lockdowns of city centers, and shifts to the outdoors. With the housing market being a strong source of dynamism for the economic recovery, it will boost construction and materials jobs, entrench remote work's prevalence, and possibly make city centers more affordable.  Work from home and greater affinity for space are some reasons why people are trying to purchase a home. On the other side of the equation, low interest rates designed to stimulate the economy have incentivized people to take out home and mortgage loans. The cohort of home-buyers is typically higher-income individuals with more flexible work conditions. For those moving from cities into rural areas, work from home options are a likely enabler. It is therefore ...
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School Closures and the Future Labor Force

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 Remote learning is far from ideal, though as Duke students, our experience is hardly as bad as it actually is for millions trying to learn amidst the pandemic. According to the World Bank, the pandemic has impacted the education of 1.6 billion school children, with school closures and other restrictions severely disrupting normal education. Places with access to technology have shifted to remote learning, but education has ground to a halt in many areas lacking means to build meaningful remote learning. Education is a key factor in productivity, labor supply decisions, and earning, so how will the pandemic's impact on education affect the future labor force? Due to school closures, dropout numbers will rise, productivity will decline, and inequality will worsen. Students may drop out for many reasons. Some must work to help financially support their family, while others just fall behind and give up on school. The UN Children's Fund calculates that the pandemic will induce 24 m...
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Flights to DLM - Disrupted Labor Market

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Bill Gates predicted a couple months ago that over 50% of business travel would be gone forever, replaced with telework platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. His reasoning stands that because companies now have the infrastructure and systems in place to support remote work, business travel will be reserved for only the most critical trips. This shift in traveller composition has enormous ramifications for the travel industry. According to industry group Airlines for America, US airlines generate 50% of their revenue from business travel even though this category accounts for just 30% of trips. The aviation industry has already been decimated by the pandemic, laying off thousands of workers. Consequently, what do these changing business practices mean for the industry's labor market in the long-term? Tempered business travel will cost human capital, worsen job polarization, and trickle down to manufacturers. What makes business travel so lucrative is that firms pay ...
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Open Borders (If You're a Robot)

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This week, a Wall Street Journal article on Australia's agriculture industry included one particularly interesting statistic: 80% of Australia's produce harvesters are usually backpacking tourists. Covid-19 has greatly disrupted Australia's agricultural labor supply, as border closures and quarantine restrictions choke off this unusually significant flow of workers. These scenes are replicated across the world with the US banning new foreign workers in 2020 with visa restrictions. Such disruptions are speeding up the adoption of automation and robots to replace lost workers, but how will this expedited timeline impact job opportunities, industry dynamics, and society in general? Pandemic-driven automation will reshuffle industries like food and manufacturing, risk intensifying inequality, and demand policy changes.  Unlike the travel and hospitality industry, the food industry's work has intensified because of the pandemic. Coupled with outbreaks at locations like meat-...
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An Opportunity for Rural Redevelopment

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In "Duck Dynasty vs Modern Family: 50 Maps of the US Cultural Divide," the New York Times repackages the way we visualize America's urban-rural divide. Such tribalism has dramatically manifested in recent years, but one way America can unify is to address urban-rural economic disparities. According to the Center for American Progress, " nonmetropolitan counties had yet to achieve pre-2008 levels of employment when the COVID-19 crisis hit ." Furthermore, rural areas " lag the nation in population growth and productivity, " and have especially low levels for upward mobility. One catalyst for closing this gap, surprisingly, may be the pandemic-driven rise of remote work. As people move from cities and spur "a boom for suburbs and rural areas," they bring with them wealth, skills, and attention; this in turn can improve rural infrastructure and job market access, helping boost the labor participation rate and productivity. The neglect of rural Am...
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