Career Retooling in a Pandemic-Recovery Phase

Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic has been disruptive of various industries globally, due to the need for social distancing in the absence of effective vaccines and treatments in the first year and counting. As humanity has racked up losses, many people have been sidelined from the workforce, which was already under pressure with the incursions of high technology in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). To survive, people have had to raid savings, liquify whatever they have of value, and rely on family and friends and public charity to survive. Many have left bills unpaid, for rent, for auto loans, for credit card debt, and others. As the world slowly comes out of the pandemic, thanks to multiple effective vaccines (by BioNTech and Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, stateside), many are starting to reenter the job market, with varying outcomes. This work explores various career retooling paths in this moment based on content analysis of available formal and informal data. There is primary research from the Social Web.