“Six months ago, all these workers were essential,” said Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, a union representing grocery workers.
A working paper published by the International Monetary Fund this year predicted that pandemic-induced automation would increase inequality in coming years, not just in the United States but around the world. Together, those forces have given low-wage workers a rare moment of leverage, leading to higher pay, more generous benefits and other perks.Īutomation threatens to tip the advantage back toward employers, potentially eroding those gains. At the same time, government benefits have allowed many people to be selective in the jobs they take. The rapid reopening of the economy has led to a surge in demand for waiters, hotel maids, retail sales clerks and other workers in service industries that had cut their staffs. The trend toward automation predates the pandemic, but it has accelerated at what is proving to be a critical moment. “Once a job is automated, it’s pretty hard to turn back,” said Casey Warman, an economist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia who has studied automation in the pandemic. But some economists say the latest wave of automation could eliminate jobs and erode bargaining power, particularly for the lowest-paid workers, in a lasting way. Technological investments that were made in response to the crisis may contribute to a post-pandemic productivity boom, allowing for higher wages and faster growth.
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