Covid's Effect on Business: 4 Articles
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I) Job Market 2023: How ‘Long COVID’ May Impact Hiring This Year
GO Banking Rates--- by NICOLE SPECTOR ---February 5, 2023, 6:00 PM
Many Americans have been infected with COVID-19, and now many are?living with symptoms indefinitely.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 1 in 5 Americans who have had COVID-19 have long COVID, which is defined as having symptoms lasting three or more months after first contracting the virus — symptoms that they didn’t have prior to their COVID infections.
“Estimates show around 16 million Americans are living with long COVID today. It is also estimated that 2 [million] to 4 million workers are still out of work due to long COVID,” said Kim Crowder, founder and CEO of Kim Crowder Consulting. “Of those who have returned to work, they may still struggle with physical, mental and/or emotional complications that impact their ability to function in the workplace.”
Both Employees and Employers Are Hurting
“The impact of COVID-19 on the job market and the economy has been significant, and it is likely to continue to be felt for some time,” said Andrew Lokenauth, founder and CEO of?Fluent in Finance?and an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco’s School of Management. “Many employees have faced challenges such as job loss, reduced hours and difficulties finding new employment.”
Employers, too, face challenges amid long COVID “such as the need to adapt to remote work and changes in consumer demand,” Lokenauth said.
Additionally, due to long COVID, companies are having trouble attracting long-term talent.
“Employers are already struggling to fill open roles,” said Brian DeChesare, the founder of?Breaking Into Wall Street. “Expect to see revenues drop off for many businesses, made worse by Americans spending less to try to manage their budgets. In the next year or two, I expect many businesses will be crumbling under the economic and staffing issues they face.”
We’ve Got a New Version of the Pandemic on Our Hands
“The initial fall of labor market participation rates stemmed from COVID infection rates and sicknesses,” said Sania Khan, chief economist at?Eightfold AI. “Economists assumed that participation rates would rise as soon as those individuals felt better; however, lingering long COVID issues have caused such severe health issues leading to the inability to work.”
The Rise of the Gig Worker?
Because of the need for flexibility that long COVID may create, we could see a rise of the gig worker.
“Those with long COVID symptoms might opt for the gig worker route,” Khan said. “Flexibility has been cited as one of the most important factors for employees and would be of great importance to those [with] long COVID symptoms. According to Eightfold AI data and analysis, we estimate a 25.6% increase in the number of contingent workers in the US in 2023.”
Khan said the increases in gig workers are expected to continue over the next few years — up a projected 16% in 2024, 14% in 2025 and 16% in 2026.
When Will Things Stabilize?
It’s tough, if not impossible, to predict when the long COVID situation will stabilize. So much about long COVID is still unknown. Only now are we learning just how many lives have been lost to long COVID — at least 3,500, according to a new CDC analysis.
“It is difficult to say how long the impact of COVID-19 on the job market and the economy will last,” Lokenauth said. “The situation is changing rapidly, and the outcome will depend on a number of factors, including the success of efforts to contain the virus and the effectiveness of government policies.”
Employers Need to Step Up
In the meantime, employers need to address the problem of long COVID by implementing policies to serve employees and prospective hires dealing with this still largely mysterious illness.
Crowder recommends that employers do the following to strengthen their workplaces and ultimately help strengthen the job market:
Employers also should be ready to address a common symptom associated with long COVID: brain fog.
“Brain fog is a common symptom we’re seeing with long COVID,” DeChesare said. “Employers should be working with employees to understand what they need from them, whether that be fewer tasks on their plates or an organizational app that helps them stay on track throughout the days, weeks, and months. When it becomes difficult to think and concentrate, employers should pull employee roles back to their basics and build them back up with the support they need.
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II) Speaker says COVID, energy concerns will continue to impact local businesses
Lou Whitmire, Mansfield News Journal
Thu, February 2, 2023, at 1:54 PM EST·3 min read
?Andrew Thomas, associate professor of international business at the the University of Akron and best-selling author, was the speaker at the Richland Area Chamber's "Economic Forecast Breakfast" Thursday.
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The COVID-19 pandemic is still here, and business owners should be concerned about energy, Andrew R. Thomas, associate professor of International Business at the University of Akron said Thursday during the "Economic Forecast Breakfast" at the Mid-Ohio Conference Center.
A world traveler outside of the United States, Thomas said, "What's happened with the pandemic, particularly with the lockdown, compared to the United States and the rest of the world, is 180 degrees. We threw $12 trillion out the window. ... Extra money to sit home and smoke weed and watch porn. ... In Panama, for example, the richest country in Latin America, everybody was sent home. They locked down for six months. I mean hard lockdown. You couldn't go out if you were a man to the grocery store, except on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If you were a woman, you got Monday, Wednesday and Friday and everybody was locked home from Friday night to Monday morning and that was from March until October of 2020 and it happened again in 2021 when the next wave of COVID hit."
Thomas said Panama residents got $100 and a digital card at the grocery store and Panamanians are now preparing for the worst year economically since 2020.
"You just can't shut the economy off," he said. "We (USA) were fortunate because the government was throwing money around. And the consequence of that which I think we're all living right now is inflation," he said. "It doesn't appear to be leaving anytime soon on a global scale."
He said the United States is back to normal but the rest of the world is not.
"Joe Biden might want the pandemic to be over. The World Health Organization might want the pandemic to be over, but this is a global evolutionary, biological event," Thomas said. "And like all traditional definitions. We have a lot of health care people here, a pandemic is when the transmission level goes down. And the transmission level of this thing is not going down. I just had COVID for the second time last week," Thomas said.
"Nature decides when this is over," he added.
Energy concerns
Thomas said Germany is burning more coal than ever.
"They're building liquid, natural gas plants. They're going back to carbon," he said.
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"China needs energy. They are a huge importer of natural gas from the United States. They're the biggest importer/consumer of natural gas," he said. "They're buying a lot of it from us. A lot of it is going through the Panama Canal."
He said in China there is an energy crunch and the demographic collapse.
He said they still have 800,000 people who live on less than $3 a day.
More than 100 area businesspeople attended the event.
Thomas focused on macro-trends which are shaping the global economy and how they are impacting American business, including areas such as population decline, geopolitics, energy, China and COVID.
Thomas is?founding editor-in-chief of the?Journal of Transportation Security, contributing editor at?Industry Week,?and a regularly featured commentator for media outlets around the world such as BBC, CNBC, Fox News, and?Wall Street Journal. A successful entrepreneur, he has traveled to and done business in more than 120 countries on all seven continents.
419-521-7223
Twitter: @LWhitmir
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal:?Akron professor was speaker at local "Economic Forecast breakfast."
III) The Impact Of The Coronavirus On Small Business
?FORBES Magazine article Of May 29, 2020.
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As a small business owner, I can tell you with total transparency and certainty that small businesses have been absolutely devastated by the coronavirus.
Not only has COVID-19 ripped right through my own small business, but friends and entrepreneurs in my local area, as well as the ones that I’ve connected with online throughout the years, are all reporting the same thing: record-low sales, record-high layoffs and a six-month forecast that is anything but certain.
The economic impact the coronavirus has had on small businesses has sent ripples through my community and my personal life. And truth be told, I’m not quite sure when or if things will get back to normal.
Almost Instant Impact
The beauty of running a small business is that you’re able to stay agile and pivot almost on demand as the market changes. I thought for sure this would give me and my fellow small business entrepreneurs an advantage when news of the coronavirus first started to bubble up to the surface.
Unfortunately, on the flip side of things, because so many small businesses are lean and so many are bootstrapped, it doesn’t take much disruption to normal day-to-day operations to feel that squeeze — especially on our bank accounts.
Small businesses certainly felt the impact of coronavirus first and continue to feel its impact disproportionately. Without the resources, the almost bottomless budgets and a war chest of cash on hand, as well as available assets that larger businesses have to get through these uncertain times, the future of almost all small businesses is up in the air.
Far Fewer Sales Coming In
After surveying 1,500 of its small business owners throughout the U.S., Goldman Sachs reported that?approximately 75%?said they might not be able to exist in three months because of the drop off in sales.
Think about that for a second. Think about what your day-to-day life would be like if 75% of the small businesses that you interact with on a "normal" daily basis just didn’t exist. We are talking about your favorite restaurants, your favorite shops and Main Street businesses in general. Independent businesses are in real danger. All of them are at a?risk of closing up shop?permanently within 90 days if we aren’t able to turn things around in a hurry.
Everybody knows that the economy is getting squeezed right now because of the coronavirus. The government has initiated a couple of interesting programs to help give relief to small businesses and entrepreneurs, as well as employees directly, but how long can we prop up the economy with these kinds of measures?
Thriving During the Pandemic
Right out of the gate, the first thing you want to do as a small business owner during this pandemic is to find a way to be consistent with your offers. As much as possible, normalize doing business just the way you always have. Your customers will feel a lot more comfortable and confident in businesses that aren’t making radical changes to their core business model for offerings.
Secondly, you need to stabilize your cash flow situation as soon as possible. Traditional and nontraditional lenders have been working hard to help small business owners, many of them by?facilitating Paycheck Protection Program lending?through the CARES Act passed by Congress a few weeks ago.
Thirdly, it’s critical that you stay as flexible as possible as a small business owner going forward into this “new normal.” The economy is going to reopen — that much is guaranteed — but the speed at which you're able to grow, build and expand will come down to your ability to remain fluid in how you serve your market and your customers.
The ability to assess your customers' confidence levels, their willingness to spend on the products and services you offer, and the kinds of offers that they respond to will determine your odds of success.
This is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to start focusing on building the business their customers most want to work with as opposed to building the business entrepreneurs always wanted to create. More often than not, those two goals are misaligned, and I can tell you with certainty that building a customer-centric business is crucial, especially now.
A Future That Is Anything But Certain
The only thing I know for certain is that the future is anything but guaranteed for my small business and businesses just like mine.
This invisible enemy has brought our global economy to its knees in a way no one could have ever expected or anticipated. We are living in a very odd time right now, with no vaccine and no treatment in sight, but we have to find a way to rebuild, reestablish and reignite the world of small business — the driver of our American economy —while keeping people safe, healthy and protected.
I don’t know what my business will look like at the end of the month, let alone in three months or at the end of the year. I’m not even sure if we will last that long. The only thing I know for certain is that I’m going to do everything I can to build and grow my business, and to help and serve my customers and clients the best I can while I am able to.
And then, when the dust finally settles and we have beat back the coronavirus pandemic that’s crippling Main Streets all over this great country, I’ll be there to do everything I can to speed up our recovery on our path back normalcy.
Chad Otar is the President at?Lending Valley, Inc, a one stop shop for business owners’ financing needs.
IV) Pivot Existing Business Strategies
Many industries have needed to pivot their business strategies this year to meet challenges with innovative, forward-thinking approaches to achieve success. Maintaining social distance and mask-wearing is well-integrated in day-to-day life now, and we're ready to move forward productively. Some businesses are back at the office implementing new health protocols to work safely. Many are still living in our world where in-person meetings have been taken over by Zoom meetings, leaving empty conference rooms around the world.?
Consumer habits have changed. The way we communicate, consume information, dine at restaurants, and shop—it's all changed. Some of these changes will only be temporary, but some will likely stick. Productivity has improved dramatically for some, making way for a dramatic shift to remote work, decreasing the need for brick-and-mortar office space. (Reference Art Hoffman’s company Cold Click, written by Kim Hoffman, October 16th, 2020)