Half a million job cuts could be just the start

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(Bloomberg Opinion) - In April 2020, with around half the world locked down,video-streaming website Vimeo Inc. was dealing with unprecedented" demand, funneling investment in customer support and technical infrastructure, and hosting virtual lunches for new hires..

. There have been more than 500,000 job cuts announced around the worldsince October, as tracked by Bloomberg, dominated by white-collar firms like Vimeo..

And its surely the opposite of what one might have expected from the Age of Zoom, where headset-and-keyboard-toting elites able to work remotely were set to leaveless digitally-literateeldersin the dust.Whats happening now isnt exactlya white-collar recession" unemployment rates for professionalsin the US are still in the low single-digits overall butthe Zoomocrats now seem to be first in line when the ax swings..

While there was undoubtedly a life-saving shift todigital and remote work during Covid-19,productivity trends have returned to pre-pandemic levels, or slightly below, according to a November paper co-authored by Stanford Universitys Nicholas Bloom.AnInternational.

The shiny object syndrome" mentioned by Vimeos Sud is also pretty revealing: The digital rush during Covid-19 opened up a deluge of short-term business opportunities that seemed too good to turn down, but which in the post-pandemic world has ebbed away; hence, why consultants who lecture CEOs on productivity are also having to cut back somewhat to the chagrin of digital nomads who envisioned setting up their office at the beach...

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