The Pandemic's Lesson for Employers

I’ve seen my fair share of boom and bust cycles as a millennial. I watched Gen X’ers ahead of me knocked sideways by the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001, and I graduated into The Great Recession of 2008. So when the pandemic hit and the world stopped, the thought for many of us was, “here we go again.” But this calamity was different. The playbook for the government, employers, and workers had to be completely reworked.

A tight labor market has many employers reconsidering their heavy-handed layoffs at the start of the pandemic. The recovery created a quick turnaround where skeleton teams couldn’t keep up with demand. With unemployment at 3.6% and 11 million open jobs (up 57% from pre-pandemic), employers are struggling to fill roles. CSX Corp.'s CEO says, in the future, the company will consider furloughs and part-time work with benefits instead of all-out firing. In terms of who will be expendable, the company's strategy will be to fire those employees with more easily trainable skills, like stocking shelves.

Meanwhile, pandemic darlings who went on hiring sprees during the pandemic have been announcing layoffs under the current market correction. Peloton, Zoom, and most recently, Robinhood, have all executed major layoffs.

Still, companies are attracting top talent with shiny salaries and missions. Ramp has quadrupled its workforce in the last year to keep up with growth for the credit card and expense management offering. Veho Tech plans to add 5x employees for the company's last-mile delivery startup. In some cases, wage-pressure is causing discord between existing employees and new hires who’ve been lured with higher salaries.