The future has become the present, when has become now.
In the midst of one of the most significant social and economic challenges the world has ever faced, changes to the global landscape are imminent, according to
a special report just released from
BMO Financial Group (TSX: BMO) focusing on the fallout from the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
The focus of the report centres on what recovery in a different economic environment would look like, specifically developments or industries that could grow substantially in the coming years.
This includes:
- Supply chain dynamics
- Remote working
- E-commerce (and mobile banking)
- Robotics & AI
- Industrial real estate
- Real-time data
- E-learning
- Local tourism
- Autonomous vehicles
- General preparedness (pre-cautionary savings and redundancies)
It’s classic “creative destruction” and many of these trends were already on the horizon only to be accelerated and accentuated to meet the needs that have arisen as people need to keep working through the pandemic. It is a rapid and harsh transition that many sectors were not prepared for, but many others are stepping into the gap to face these long-term challenges.
In Canada specifically, these abrupt changes dropped upon business and workers by the shutdown might be a “spark that closes the gap” for a country that has had a history of struggles with productivity relative to peers on the global scale. At least, according to the BMO report’s perspective, which suggests that -
Changes have been made in the past month that took days or hours which, in “normal” times, may have taken months or years.
BMO’s Chief Executive Officer Darryl White stressed that managing this new landscape, businesses need keep agile and innovative.
“Sector by sector, industry by industry, we are seeing numerous examples of how new ways of doing business will support the economic recovery. We will emerge from this difficult period stronger.”
For an alternative perspective, the McDonald-Laurier Institute recently published
a special report beyond its quarterly review, just looking at Canada’s economy in March 2020. In this reports view, the impact of COVID-19 policies on jobs is much more terrible than forecast and bound to get worse.
While economists had forecast 500,000 jobs would be lost, it was more than twice that number last month, at 1.01 million.
Will the economy come “roaring back”? If recovery hinges on treatment and a vaccine, how many years would this era last, or is this just “the new normal”? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.