Economic Covid aftermath forecast?

I’m interested in hearing diverse views on how the land will lie regarding global and Irish economy. I can only imagine there will be quite the outfall. Of course it is all predicated on how quickly Covid becomes less of a significant threat; however what might be the best case scenario if within 6 months we have found a greatly improved way to live with Covid and its potentially emerging variants? What might we be facing if Covid is showing itself to be a constant mutator in that each mutation brings a most a different level of threat and uncertainty where hospitality continues to be **** down and re-opening?

Which industries or professions will become more sustainable, and which types of jobs may start to become overfilled as people retrain out of likes of hospitality or other vulnerable professions?

Anyone working on maintenance/roll out of broadband is going to do v.well as work from home becomes more popular

Possibly mini-boom in smale-scale sales of office supplies and some work for builders as governments are likely to give some breed of a tax rebate towards this...it will be claimed as help to put our carbon emissions in right direction

Sales of dogs/pet care and vet bills to rise as people get more pets etc......anyone working in retail selling hobby equipment to do well as everyone,who would one time been out every weekend,now has hobbies instead

The thing is, all going well, what exactly will normal be?

I reckon this:

WFH will become increasingly commonplace, which will some implications for city centres.

Demand for hospitality services will return as we are (mostly) social creatures, but a lot of people will face hot out of that business. Demand will be high, and eg harder to get a table in a restaurant for a night out. Until confidence builds up, and that could take a decade.

There will be increasing demand for home improvements as people will want to maximise home comforts and change layouts. Things with get worn out more quickly in the home so there will be a higher turnover of home furniture, fittings, appliances. At the same time office fittings will be proportionally less in demand. Existing HQs and offices may become a bit shabby as companies just don’t bother so much about that.

WFH will change requirements for risk assessments by insurance companies. So there may be the question of Risk Assessors paying home visits (at least initially to sign off on suitability of home work environment on grounds of G&S with maybe annual virtual inspections thereafter. That will increase risk assessment costs as there will be many small premises rather than fewer larger ones to inspect. There will be increasing (but small number of) cases of employees claiming for tripping over own home layout which will feed into the demand for risk assessments.

Pets will remain popular as more people WFH. Vets and pet suppliers should prosper.

People will want to travel out at weekends to compensate for being cooped up in the house all the weekdays. So country hotels, activity centres etc should relatively prosper.

There will inevitably be a global downturn in economy to some degree, until the world gets back on its feet.

There will be a really tragic fallout in terms of missed diagnoses due to the focus on Covid, there will be the train wreck of mental health crises as a result of people living more isolated and restricted lives and having suffered losses and succumbed to addictions. The undertakers will see a bit of an upsurge in demand. Psychology/psychiatry services will be in as great of demand as mainly physical medicine.

Gardening will come back into focus with people being more home based and have a bit more time to tend to it, so garden centre visits will be a thing at the weekends or summer evenings.

Tech support, cloud computing, data management, data security will be increasingly in demand, so that sector will inevitably prosper.

Electric motoring will become more the norm, as well as hybrid motoring becoming the alternative. Diesels will still be popular for more rural motoring. However with taxes riding to cover medical devices, and people wanting to invest in home environment, many will hold on to still very well functioning older cars which last better than they ever did. Look at what taxi drivers use to see the overall best functioning and economic cars.

Entertainment (outside tv/home environment) will be in demand and people may prioritise that for their spend, having been denied it for so long.

Overall I see the economy will pick up here and there over time and all being well in a decade much of the world could be well back on its feet.

But likely I have missed seeing some crucially important factors that may prove me to be on the wrong track.

As regards world banking & industry, that’s a complex subject that many will have insights I don’t have to factor in.

Pussyhands

The getting out of hospitality thing is overblown.

If it was so easy to get better jobs, why didn't they do it before covid? It's not easy, that's why.

The reason hospitality workers are in such shortage is because foreign workers are not coming to Ireland as much because they're unsure about covid situation.

Do you think a brazilian who's coming to Ireland for 8 months or 2 years to study english will care about only earning minimum wage in a hotel or pub? They'll jump at the chance to get some money to pay their rent and travel Ireland and Europe.

Stagflation

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118380298#Comment_118380298

This is very true. A lot of Eastern Europeans have earned a nice little bit of money to put on a nice house in their own lovely home countries. Not long back from Romania, and looking at the nice standard of living to be enjoyed by many, one would be puzzled why any would bother with Ireland except for somewhat higher wages to save as they study something alongside. I was in a very modern shopping centre in Bucharest the likes of which isn’t to be found in Ireland. More like something you find in UAE. Natives are attracted to remain with such nice standards of living.

Brazil is a long way to travel from when things are utterly uncertain. Flights to Bucharest and Gdánsk are relatively cheap, a few hours duration, different matter getting back to likes of Belém or Manaus. These so-caller English schools are fly-by-night operations, and most Brazilians are already quite fluent and have better English by the time they come here than likes of radio presenter Joe Duffy. They are often quite entrepreneurial types who will turn their hand to a lot of things.

Maybe if hospitality gets firing again after some years those handy temporary jobs will again become attractive to foreigners if lots of places haven’t gone out of business with owners turning to other types of business altogether. It’s hard enough to forecast that. I just feel for a few years demand may well exceed supply.