COVID-19 and the Great Rehiring

More than 25 million Americans were laid off in April, and that’s just the official count. Unofficially, some economists estimate that more than 52 percent of Americans under the age of 45 have lost jobs, hours, or been furloughed. The unemployment rate could eventually top 30 percent. That means everyone—from lawyers to waiters, software engineers to carpenters to marketers—will be affected.

 
Clearly, these are not normal times. So we can’t rely on the “normal” tools we’ve previously used to help people find work: the LinkedIn and Craigslist searches, coffee chats, recruiters, staffing agencies, and so on. Those methods can’t hit the speed, scale, and placement quality that companies or candidates will need coming out of this crisis. But verticalized jobs marketplaces—platforms that focus on one industry, role, candidate type, or demographic—can and will. Now is the time to be building them.

While the current focus is rightly on doing everything we can do to mitigate the health-related impact from the virus (and navigating the greater structural challenges at play), it’s worth asking what happens once the immediate health crisis is under control and tens of millions of professionally displaced people are seeking new jobs. Whether it is this year, next year, or beyond, the quicker we can get people back to work—in the best-paying jobs they’re qualified to perform—the better for workers, companies, and the economy.

Even in the hopeful scenario of a V-shaped recovery, the assumption that people will quickly end up back at their previous jobs seems short-sighted. Rebuilding the labor market is a much more complex task than a market rebound. As we rebuild, an inevitable reshuffling will happen. Businesses and job seekers will experience an accelerated sorting of talent and opportunity. But the fallout from the economic shutdown is like throwing a pack of cards in the air: you can eventually put the deck back together, but not everyone will end up in the same spot.

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Πηγή: a16z.com