Why the pandemic left long-term scars on global job market

By PAUL WISEMAN and ALEXANDRA OLSON AP Business Writers
When the viral pandemic slammed violently into the U.S. economy a year ago, igniting a devastating recession, it swept away tens of millions of jobs. Even as viral vaccines increasingly promise a return to something close to normal life, the coronavirus seems sure to leave permanent scars on the job market. Millions of jobs lost to the pandemic aren’t expected to come back — a sizable proportion of them at employers that require face-to-face contact with consumers: Hotels, restaurants, retailers, entertainment venues. The threat to workers in those occupations, many of them low-wage earners, marks a sharp reversal from the Great Recession, when middle- and higher-wage workers bore the brunt of job losses.