What's Next

National

Future

Axios Future

The endgame of the pandemic is giving both employers and workers a chance to create a more humane relationship — both in the office and out of it.

The big picture: Companies need workers, but many employees aren't ready to go back to the way things used to be. A hybrid setup could provide the best possible way forward, if both sides are willing to give.

What's happening: As the most acute stage of the pandemic draws to a close, American companies face a new challenge: getting workers back to work.

There were 9.3 million job openings in April, the highest level since at least 2000, while the number of resignations and layoffs reached record highs and lows respectively.

Wages are rising, and companies are offering everything from educational assistance to free appetizers to get potential employees to sign on. But millions of unemployed workers are holding back, while millions more who are employed are eyeing the exit signs.

Between the lines: The primary conflict — and the primary opportunity — is in where work will take place: in the office, at home or somewhere in between.

While the pandemic demonstrated that white-collar productivity, for the most part, could be maintained remotely, with a few exceptions most companies are pushing for at least a partial return to the office.

Workers appear to be significantly less eager. 64% would pick permanent work from home over a $30,000 raise, according to a survey last month by the professional network Blind of employees at 45 of the largest companies in the U.S.

What they're saying: "This is our new industrial revolution, equivalent to when everyone was moving off the farms and into the cities," says Kristi Woolsey, associate director at the consultancy BCG.

"We're not going back to the way things were, and companies know that if they want to attract the best and the brightest, they're going to have to offer a level of flexibility that they didn't beforehand."

Be smart: It's not that white-collar employees hate the office or have fallen in love with working out of spare bedrooms and off kitchen tables during the pandemic.

But workers absolutely hate commuting — it's ranked as the least favorite daily activity overall — and they've come to value the control that the option of remote work gives them over their lives.

"It used to be that you fit life into work," says Kate Duchene, the CEO and president of the global human capital company RGP. "Now it's the opposite — how do you fit work into life?"

What to watch: How companies handle both current and prospective employees who say they value flexibility above all.

A hybrid setup — where workers come to the office at most a few days a week — offers the best opportunity to provide flexibility on both sides.

Yes, but: As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote recently, "Everything becomes more complex, not less complex, in hybrid work."

Out are the ping-pong tables and free kombucha of the pre-pandemic times, says Matt Watson, CEO and co-founder of the benefits management company Origin. Instead, "companies are looking to offer benefits that directly impact a worker's life" outside of the office.

What's next: Sheer demographics mean that U.S. workers could find themselves with unaccustomed leverage for years into the future.

Population growth for Americans 20 to 64 turned negative last year for the first time in U.S. history, while the Congressional Budget Office predicts that the potential labor force will grow for the 2020s at roughly half the rate it did from 2000 to 2020.

The bottom line: It's been a very long time since U.S. workers held this much leverage, and that could help shape some better compromises in the work world.

1. A new industrial revolution presses the reset button on work

Coming: More flexibility for workers, benefits for life rather than the office, and more bargaining power.

Illustration of a hand pressing a reset button on a briefcase

Future of work

Jobs

The endgame of the pandemic is giving both employers and workers a chance to create a more humane relationship — both in the office and out of it.The big picture: Companies need workers, but many employees aren&#x27;t ready to go back to the way things used to be. A hybrid setup could provide the best possible way forward, if both sides are willing to give.

Top stories & latest news on the Federal Reserve, real-time data, plus the biggest shifts happening in the U.S. and global economy.

Economy

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

Finish Line

Axios Finish Line

Two years ago, it was easy to know what your office, your commute, your neighborhood or your kid’s school would look like in coming months. Not any more.

What's happening: First the pandemic upended our plans, and now its aftermath is breaking our predictions.

Why it matters: The new ways of living, working and playing that this era ushers in will put millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in play.

"We’ve all been living with uncertainty that we’ve not had in a generation," says Luis Bettencourt, an expert on urban innovation at the University of Chicago. "What comes next is really interesting because we’ll all reevaluating our lives."

The structure of cities is changing, as telework allows people to move around. "A city is the balance between where people live and where people work," says Bettencourt. "This balance is now all up for grabs."

Superstar cities like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago are losing people to smaller places like Charlotte, Portland and Reno.

The cities themselves are changing, too. Outdoor dining and entertainment — popularized by pandemic-era social distancing — has been a hit and is pushing cities to rethink how streets and parks look.

Our jobs and workplaces are changing. Companies are deciding what the future looks like, and for most, it'll be a mix of staying home and going into the office. But no one knows what that actually means.

Record numbers of Americans are leaving their jobs. Many of them are doing so because the pandemic gave them time to reflect on their careers, and they decided to switch fields. Many others are quitting because their organizations won't allow remote work and they want to stick with teleworking after the pandemic.

"Employees have gained a little power now that they didn’t have before," says Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at Texas A&M University. "That's a big shift."

The way we learn is changing. The pandemic's disruption of education will take years to recover from, but some of the new technology forced upon teachers and students could push learning forward.

Many schools and startups are coming up with new ideas — like changing lesson structures or doing away with letter grades — to shake up the old ways in education.

Tech could also allow educators to personalize lessons for individual students.

The way we get around is changing, as the pandemic upended our transportation habits.

Car sales have spiked as more people moved to the suburbs or bought a vehicle to have a safer way to get places during the worst months of the pandemic.

Transit agencies are hurting as lots of travel and commuting stopped for more than a year.

At the same time, labor shortages have made ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft more expensive and less accessible. People who’ve relied on those will have to look to other modes of getting around.

What we do for fun is changing, as doing cool stuff from your house becomes a permanent part of play.

Just like hybrid offices or schools, hybrid entertainment — like virtual concerts with big budgets — is becoming more popular. 

"Lots of people have a habit like, 'I go out to dinner every Friday night,'" says University of Michigan economist Betsey Stevenson. "Those habits got smashed. Now, do you go back to having dinner out every Friday night or do you keep the replacement plan that you came up with at home?"

The art of predicting what's next is itself falling apart.

"It’s a hard time for forecasting," Stevenson says. "What we normally do with forecasting is just assume preferences are going to be stable. But we just had the biggest shock to preferences we’ve ever seen."

2. How the pandemic is still ruining our plans

COVID threw a wrench in the works of all the different ways we map out the near future.

Illustration of an hourglass with viruses inside

Two years ago, it was easy to know what your office, your commute, your neighborhood or your kid’s school would look like in coming months. Not any more.What&#x27;s happening: First the pandemic upended our plans, and now its aftermath is breaking our predictions.

Whats Next

Axios What's Next

As cities rebuild their mass transit systems after a year of disruption, they must meet riders where they are, not where they were.

Why it matters: Some agencies are rethinking traditional fixed-route networks in favor of flexible, on-demand rides, often in underserved communities.

The big picture: Predicting demand for public transportation is a crapshoot until gradually reopening businesses sort out their post-pandemic work rituals. 

Bus and train ridership, which collapsed at the start of the pandemic, is still half what it used to be, according to the American Public Transportation Association.

"We've shifted from survival mode to winning back riders," APTA CEO Paul Skoutelas tells Axios.

Yes, but: Transportation needs have changed dramatically in the past year.

Urban residents who relocated to far-flung suburbs are making plans to visit downtown offices just once or twice a week in the future.

Meanwhile, lower-income people who still depend on public transportation are waiting longer for pared-back services.

And new centers of employment have popped up in the suburbs and exurbs of many metropolitan areas — often beyond traditional service areas.

The upheaval is an opportunity for transit agencies to experiment with new approaches.

"Flexibility is the biggest thing. You need to have a system that can react to change very quickly. It could differ by the day," says Brett Wheatley, CEO of Ford-owned TransLoc, a transportation software firm that advises cities, businesses and campuses.

One way cities aim to lure back riders is by making mass transit more efficient, especially in light of increased private car usage since the pandemic.

Many cities, including Boston and San Francisco, are adding bus priority lanes to zip through traffic jams.

In Philadelphia, the regional public transportation authority, SEPTA, is partnering with Via, a transit software company, to provide on-demand shuttle services to graveyard shift workers at new distribution centers built on the outskirts of the city.

With demand higher than expected, the agency is now putting new muscle behind efforts to redesign its bus networks.

"Our job centers have changed. Our population, our land use, a lot has changed," says senior operations planner Harley Cooper. "Our bus network has not."

What to watch: Arlington, Texas, a city of nearly 400,000 people with no traditional bus or rail service, could be a model for what's next in transportation.

It partnered with Via to provide on-demand transportation throughout the city. 

Residents use an app to summon a ride from one of about 50 shuttle vans that crisscross the city's 99 square miles.

Fares ranging from $3 to $5 are subsidized by the city, but students and lower-income people get to ride for free. 

It costs a small fraction of what traditional mass transit would cost, says outgoing Mayor Jeff Williams, and helps reduce congestion and emissions, too. 

The bottom line, says Williams: "We finally have public transportation that is really making a difference."

3. Flatlined transit systems try new tricks

Mass transit is trying to adapt to scrambled commutes and new demands for flexibility.

Illustration of a multi-colored train moving fast towards the viewer.

rapid transit

As cities rebuild their mass transit systems after a year of disruption, they must meet riders where they are, not where they were.Why it matters: Some agencies are rethinking traditional fixed-route networks in favor of flexible, on-demand rides, often in underserved communities.

President Biden has made the COVID-19 crisis and a post-Trump return to national unity and traditional democratic ideals his top priorities. From vaccinations to stimulus to schools, Biden is seeking bipartisan compromise while showing a willingness to use executive authority and bare Democratic majorities in the U.S. House and Senate to implement his policies. Republican leaders are navigating deep party divisions over if and how to move beyond former President Trump.

Politics & Policy

From the Valley to D.C., Big Tech players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are under more scrutiny than ever as new technology develops and privacy and antitrust concerns grow in lockstep with companies’ ambitions.

Technology

New York City will harness data from thousands of internet-connected smart thermometers to identify future outbreaks days or even weeks before case numbers start rising.

Why it matters: By the time large numbers of sick people start showing up in hospitals, it's often too late to quickly curb a new outbreak. But devices that can instantly alert health officials when unusual fevers are popping up in households can give them time to stop further spread.

Driving the news: Over the coming months, the California-based startup Kinsa will distribute for free up to 100,000 of its internet-connected thermometers through New York City's elementary schools.

Readings from the thermometers are sent to Kinsa's app, which also quizzes users on any other symptoms they might have and sends them guidance on any next steps on care. 

City health officials will have access to aggregated, anonymized Kinsa data, which will help them identify unusual illness clusters as soon as possible, while school administrators and families will be able to view data about grade-level trends at their school.

What they're saying: "We're aggregating data to be able to do outbreak detection down to the level of New York's 42 neighborhoods," says Inder Singh, the founder and CEO of Kinsa, who adds that distribution is starting with the areas that were hardest hit by COVID-19.

Background: Most disease-tracking efforts depend on data reported by hospitals and doctors' offices, but days will often pass between infection and a patient showing up at a clinic, and some people will never get tested.

But because Kinsa is able to instantly identify when a fever shows up — at the point where someone is "mildly symptomatic," Singh notes — it's been more successful than most existing models in predicting disease outbreaks ahead of time.

When COVID-19 first hit early last year, Kinsa’s models detected an unusual rise in fevers more than two weeks before peak deaths hit.

"If New York had shut down just a week earlier, it would have prevented 200,000 cases and saved 36,000 lives," says Singh.

The bottom line: On an individual level and on a community one, early detection saves lives.

4. NY smart-thermometer network could predict next COVID wave

The Kinsa thermometers can relay data about fevers to health officials, giving them a heads up on disease spread.

Illustration of a Kinsa thermometer with EKG lines in the background

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo courtesy Kinsa

Coronavirus

New York City will harness data from thousands of internet-connected smart thermometers to identify future outbreaks days or even weeks before case numbers start rising.Why it matters: By the time large numbers of sick people start showing up in hospitals, it&#x27;s often too late to quickly curb a new outbreak. But devices that can instantly alert health officials when unusual fevers are popping up in households can give them time to stop further spread.

The U.S. faces a range of health care flashpoints — unaffordable drugs, opioids, vaping — as we debate whether to adopt universal care. For now, the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land, but Republicans want to issue it a final death blow.

Health

Inspired by pandemic-era social distancing and propelled by post-pandemic labor shortages, businesses are experimenting with taking humans out of the retail equation. 

Case in point: I had lunch at the server-less Brooklyn Dumpling Shop this week. The three-week-old fast casual eatery in Manhattan's East Village has screens where patrons punch in their preferences, and then, when their food is ready, it appears in a cubby.

I could see the chefs preparing my food — one order of classic pork dumplings and one order of the lamb gyro variety with yogurt sauce — behind a glass wall, but that was my only interaction with humans during lunch.

I've had better pork gyoza, but the lamb dumplings were pretty creative and quite tasty. I'll definitely go back for the Reuben and cheeseburger dumplings.

I asked Brooklyn Dumpling Shop founder Stratis Morfogen about the impact on automating all or parts of restaurants on jobs.

He said cutting down on payroll by using tech could allow many more eateries to keep their doors open — and that tech could at least save back-of-house jobs.

On top of that, it's a way to combat staff shortages in the service industry.

There's a long list of tech-infused shopping and eating experiences that take human workers out of the picture.

Amazon has popularized its checkout-less Go stores.

Reformation, a clothing boutique with locations in big cities, has screens in its dressing rooms that allow you to summon items to try on without dealing with a salesperson.

Kroger has an in-house innovation lab called Sunrise Technologies that's partnering with Microsoft to develop sensors and shelves that can automatically keep track of what needs restocking.

But, but, but: Machines are still very limited in what they can do, and often humans are still better at the job. Look at Walmart, which pulled inventory-tracking robots out of its stores after finding human workers were more efficient.

Of note: Brooklyn Dumpling Shop isn't exactly a new idea — it's a nod to the automats of the past, where food appeared in coin-operated kiosks.

A photo of Audrey Hepburn retrieving food at an Automat

Decor at the dumpling shop. Photo: Erica Pandey/Axios

5. Dumplings, yes. Servers, no

A New York food outlet tries cutting out the human element.

A line of red cubbies under a menu on a screen

The "waiters" at Brooklyn Dumpling Shop. Photo: Erica Pandey/Axios

Fast food

Labor Market

Inspired by pandemic-era social distancing and propelled by post-pandemic labor shortages, businesses are experimenting with taking humans out of the retail equation. Case in point: I had lunch at the server-less Brooklyn Dumpling Shop this week. The three-week-old fast casual eatery in Manhattan&#x27;s East Village has screens where patrons punch in their preferences, and then, when their food is ready, it appears in a cubby.

Flatlined transit systems try new tricks

Illustration of neon triangles pointing to the right