BBC Learnings · Section 7

Coronavirus Dealing with post-pandemic mass unemployment

You and I are lucky, Sam, because we can do our jobs remotely – working from home.

Level: C1 · 111 sentences

Transcript

You and I are lucky, Sam,
because we can do our jobs remotely – working from home.
There are some downsides though, like not being able to meet up
with friends or share ideas with colleagues.
I'm going out for lunch.
But the coronavirus pandemic has caused millions
of people to lose their job.
and force thousands more out of work temporarily
with no idea if their job
will still be there when they return.
For those daily workers without savings to pay
the rent and feed their families, it's been especially stressful.
Each job loss is a potential personal tragedy.
In this programme, we'll be assessing the post-Covid job landscape
and asking whether a radical new approach
is needed to prevent global mass unemployment.
We'll be asking whether one of the world's smallest
and richest countries, Denmark, might hold the answer.
And of course, we'll be learning some new vocabulary as well.
But first, it's time for our quiz question.
One man who knows a lot about jobs is Brad Smith,
president of Microsoft, a company employing over 150,000 workers.
He's made gloomy predictions about the number of people out of work.
But how many people does he predict
will be left unemployed this year?
as a result of the coronavirus pandemic?
Is it a one-quarter of a billion people,
b one-third of a billion people,
or c half a billion people?
Wow, those numbers do really look gloomy.
I'll say b one-third of a billion people unemployed around the world.
OK, Sam, we'll come back to that later.
Now, mass unemployment – millions of people
losing their jobs due to the Covid pandemic –
has left the world facing an enormous jobs challenge.
Elizabeth Reynolds of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
is author of the report Work of the Future.
Here she is talking to the BBC World Service programme Business Daily about the current situation.
Well, I think in the short term
it does feel like we are not
yet in a place where we can...
talk about recovery and rebuilding completely.
We're still going to see the ramifications
or the impact and the ripple effect of all
of this for months to come.
We use the expressions in the long term
and in the short term to talk about what will happen
over a long or short period of time.
In the short term, over a short period of time,
Elizabeth thinks it's too early to talk about a job's recovery.
She also warns that we haven't
yet experienced the full impact or ramifications of the pandemic.
Like throwing a stone into water,
these consequences create a ripple effect –
a situation where one event causes a series
of effects which spread and produce further effects.
According to Elizabeth, the problem is that many of the government measures
put in place to support jobs
are not sustainable in the long term.
She says more radical change is needed.
Of course, the big question is how.
One proposed solution is the Danish model.
This balances citizens' rights and duties.
Denmark provides one of the world's most generous unemployment payouts,
but in return, citizens are expected to commit to any job
or training the government thinks would be beneficial.
Jakob Kierkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute
in Washington, is himself a Dane.
Here he explains to BBC Business Daily how the model works.
It's very easy to hire and fire people in Denmark.
It doesn't cost you anything.
And you don't have sort of a guaranteed job
for life once you get a permanent contract,
which is the situation in many other continental European countries.
So it combines labor market flexibility with employment security,
namely the idea that people, if they lose their job,
they know that they can find another job
even if that requires them to pick up new skills,
because that upskilling or reskilling, if you
like, is going to be made available to them,
partly through very lavish government subsidies.
Denmark enjoys labour flexibility because it's easy
for bosses to hire and fire,
employ someone and release them from employment,
meaning there's no such thing as a job for life,
one that you can stay in all your working life.
But citizens also have the security
of lavish – generous and expensive – benefits,
and the government will also pay
for worker upskilling – training to learn new skills,
making them better at their jobs.
And thereby preventing unemployment, which reminds
me of your quiz question, Neil.
Yes, I asked you how many people were predicted
to lose their jobs to the Covid pandemic.
And I said b – one third of a billion.
Well, fortunately it's the slightly lower but still worrying figure
of one quarter of a billion people.
We've been discussing predictions of mass unemployment in the short term,
or over a short time period, caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
It also seems we will be experiencing
the ripple effects – series of consequences –
of the virus for a long time to come.
One solution to mass unemployment may be the Danish model,
where the power to hire or fire,
employ someone or make them unemployed,
means there are not many jobs for life –
jobs you can do all your working life.
But lavish – expensive and generous – benefits from the government,
who also pay for upskilling or training in new skills,
means that Danish unemployment is rarely out of control.