The New Normal in IT. Gregory S. Smith
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during the 2020 calendar as a result of Covid-19 and the shift to online learning?
University of Texas, San Antonio
We did not offer discounts, but refunds on services such as housing and meals were made. We also offered loaner laptops and Wi-Fi devices to students.
—KENDRA C. KETCHUM, Vice President for Information Management and Technology, The University of Texas at San Antonio
Collegis Education
No, but there were direct payments for students from several COVID relief programs. These programs sent funds to schools and required that a portion (i.e. 50%) be paid directly to students. The rest was available to schools to use in support of programs and COVID-related changes, like technology enhancements.
—DR. JASON NAIRN, VP of IT and Security at Collegis Education
Georgetown University
Yes. The university offered undergraduate students a 10 percent discount if they did not return to the university in person. In addition, students were offered a 20 percent discount for housing and dining fees as certain semesters were shortened.
—GREGORY S. SMITH, Adjunct Professor, Technology Management Graduate Program
University of Akureyri, Iceland
No.
—HOLMAR ERLU SVANSSON, Managing Director, University of Akureyri, Iceland
Unemployment Impacts in the United States and Around the Globe
Although the global pandemic will likely come to an end at one point as a result of herd immunity and a global vaccine push with likely annual booster shots, unemployment rates in the United States and globally will take years to recover to pre-Covid-19 levels. According to the World Economic Outlook released by the International Monetary Fund in October 2020, “the pandemic had and will continue to have especially severe effects on the most economically vulnerable,” specifically women and younger workers.32 Recognizing that unemployment is typically measured by dividing the unemployed individuals by the total number of individuals in a particular country's labor force, it can be a misleading number.33 The primary reason is that if a person lost a full-time job and settled for a part-time job – they are still considered employed. Thus, the published unemployment numbers include full unemployed individuals, but not underemployed, or those who accept part-time positions in the labor force. As a result, the real unemployment numbers for countries is typically higher than what is published by governments.
The International Monetary Fund leveraged the United Nation's (UN) International Labour Organization (ILO) and concluded that “the reduction in work hours in the second quarter of 2020 was equivalent to the loss of 495 million full-time jobs, “which added to the equivalent of 160 million full-time jobs lost in the first quarter” of 2020.33 The UN's ILO goes on to predict the following impacts across the globe:
Losses to continue into the third quarter of 2020 equal to 345 million full-time positions19.8 percent in the Americas12.4 percent in the Arab states11.6 percent in Europe and Central Asia11.5 percent in Africa10.7 percent in the Asia-Pacific region
Losses are projected for the fourth quarter of 2020 to be 245 million full-time jobs34
How long it takes to recovery jobs lost worldwide is anyone's guess. Economists are struggling to determine by industry how long if ever certain job sectors will recover to pre-Covid-19 levels.
According to the United States Congressional Research Service (CRS), the impact from the recent 2020–2021 coronavirus pandemic on the U.S. job market was worse than compared to the end of the Great Recession in 2009.35 The Congressional Research Service reported that unemployment increased from 5 percent in 2007 to 10 percent in October 2009 compared to the Covid-19 pandemic unemployment rate of 3.5 percent in February 2020, before peaking at 14.8 percent in April 2020 (see Exhibit 1.2).36 The Congressional Research Service indicated that “the peak represents the quickest month-over-month increase in employment rates and the highest overall unemployment rate since the CRS data started being collected in 1948.37
The Congressional Research Service went on to indicate the following other impacts in the United States:
During the first three months of the pandemic in 2020, unemployment was concentrated in sectors that provided “in-person services” such as leisure and hospitality, which experienced an unemployment rate of 39.3 percent in April 2020.Exhibit 1.2 Historical Unemployment Rate in the United States (1948–2021)Note: Shaded regions indicate recessionary periods as identified by the National Bureau of Economic Research.Source: U.S. Congressional Research Service, April 14, 2021.
Part-time workers experienced an unemployment rate “almost twice that of their full-time counterparts” by April (24.5 percent compared to 12.9 percent)
Workers without a college degree experienced 21.2 percent unemployment compared to 8.4 percent workers with a Bachelor's degree or higher.
Teenage women experienced an unemployment rate of 36.6 percent compared to 28.6 percent of teenage men.
Women aged 25–54 years old experienced 13.7 percent unemployment compared to their counterpart males of the same age range of 12.1 percent.
Unemployment rates by ethnicity from the peak of the pandemic in April to the end of 2020 was reported as 16.7 percent for Black, 14.1 percent for White, 18.9 percent for Hispanic workers.38
Unemployment rates recovered to lower levels by March 2021 but varied by racial group (see Exhibit 1.3) with Black unemployment at 9.6 percent, Asian unemployment at 6 percent, followed by White unemployment of 5.4 percent.39
The Hackett Group, a strategic consultancy and leading enterprise benchmarking firm to global companies, looked at impacts of the pandemic from a few different perspectives. In a recent study, the 2020 Covid-19 Poll, which included participation from 250 global companies, Hackett found that five times more high impact organizations cut their IT budgets as a result of impacts from the pandemic (see Exhibit 1.4).40