Some also see danger in offering too much support for companies, with too little discrimination over who gets it. They say that’s a recipe for creating “zombie firms” that can’t survive in a free market and are only kept alive by state aid—making the whole economy less productive.

Great Divides
The stimulus debate can feel like a first-world luxury. Poor countries lack the resources to protect jobs and businesses—or invest in vaccines—the way wealthier peers have done, and they’ll need to tighten belts sooner or risk currency crises and capital flight.

The World Bank warns that the pandemic is spawning a new generation of poverty and debt turmoil, and the IMF says developing nations risk getting set back by a decade.

Creditor governments in the G-20 have taken some steps to ease the plight of the poorest borrowers, but they’ve been slammed by aid groups for offering only limited debt relief and failing to rope private investors into the plan.

K-Shaped
Low-paying work in services, where there’s more face-to-face contact with customers, tended to disappear first as economies locked down. And financial markets, where assets are mostly owned by the rich, came roaring back much faster than job markets.

The upshot has been labeled a “K-shaped recovery.” The virus has widened income or wealth gaps across faultlines of class, race and gender.

Women have been hit disproportionately hard—partly because they’re more likely to work in the industries that struggled, but also because they had to shoulder much of the extra childcare burden as schools closed. In Canada, women’s participation in the labor force fell to the lowest since the mid-1980s.

Rise Of The Robots
Covid-19 triggered new concerns about physical contact in industries where social distancing is tough—like retail, hospitality or warehousing. One fix is to replace the humans with robots.

Research suggests that automation often gains ground during a recession. In the pandemic, companies accelerated work on machines that can check guests into hotels, cut salads at restaurants, or collect fees at toll booths. And shopping moved further online.

These innovations will make economies more productive. But they also mean that when it’s safe to go back to work, some jobs just won’t be there. And the longer people stay unemployed, the more their skills can atrophy—something economists call “hysteresis.”

You’re On Mute
Higher up the income ladder, remote offices suddenly became the norm. One study found that two-thirds of U.S. GDP in May was generated by people working at home. Many companies told employees to stay away from the office well into 2021, and some signaled they’ll make flexible work permanent.

Work-from-home has mostly passed the technology test, giving employers and staff new options. That’s a worry for businesses catering to the old infrastructure of office life, from commercial real estate to food and transportation. It’s a boon for those building a new one: shares in videoconferencing platform Zoom jumped more than six-fold this year.