Is anyone celebrating this year’s Labour Day? I’m not! Too busy contemplating the future though I probably shouldn’t because if this Coronavirus has taught me anything, it’s to live one day at a time instead of making all these grand plans. We’ve always been encouraged to plan ahead, but this pandemic has wreaked such havoc on many people’s lives and at the moment, it’s improvisation at best. While you might still have a job today, it might be gone tomorrow or next week. To think that all this time, we’ve been worried about robots taking our jobs not knowing that COVID-19 is the real job killer, literally. Even traditionally “safe” jobs are now threatened. I remember going over career choices with my mum and she was really making the case for medicine and education. I should mention that I didn’t make the grades for the former, nor was I really keen to pursue the profession, but I recall her saying that doctors and teachers will always have jobs. Well, she was right about doctors. Teachers though? Not to so much. There’re schools that might not re-open in the foreseeable future because the students won’t return; either because their parents can’t afford to send them back or they’ve simply embraced the concept of homeschooling and no longer see the need to spend that much on education when they can teach their kids themselves, and in effect save while at it. And you know who else is saving? Employers of non-essential workers, a category under which many of us fall. Now they don’t even have to spend as much on water, hand sanitiser and other logistics since most employees are working remotely. My other worry is that the longer the lockdown lasts, the more likely this whole non-essential workers business might lead to permanent terminations. If the company has survived two or so months without your daily input, maybe they don’t need you after all! I’ve also been thinking about all the people who thought 2020 was “their year” and decided to quit their salaried jobs to start their own businesses and just four months in, are regretting the decision because they cleaned up all their savings and now the businesses are on life support! What would you do? Try to get the old job back? Hardly anyone is hiring now. This is exactly why people don’t take risks. The fear of failure and losing your safety net. And it’s not like all start-ups and small businesses can access lines of credit at short notice. On a recent supermarket run, I noticed that some products I had no trouble stocking up on pre-COVID were missing, not because anyone is stockpiling because panic buying is not really happening here, but because that business has probably closed. Elsewhere, farmers and florists are counting their losses as their produce rots with hardly any buyers. The oil industry, aviation and entire economies on the verge of collapse. The working dead indeed!
