Normal Imagined

Unemployment claims are dropping. Employers are hiring again and confronting maddening shortages of applicants with skillsets they need. Schools are returning to classrooms. Universities and colleges are preparing for fall terms with full enrollment and classrooms. Broadway shows are scheduling their openings. Concerts are staging their return. Is normal returning?

In a sense, yes, In the broader sense, no.

Normal has boundaries to its definition. The normal we once knew, will likely not return. That is the nature of change. One normal shifts to the next. Morphing takes place continually. We don’t always notice it because the shifts are small, miniscule even.

The pandemic was an enormous shock to our normal. With its passing, a new normal will form, one we will inure to and accept as new. Normal. What that will likely be is left only to our imagination. But let us have some fun and imagine what it might be like.

Work from Home: a growing feature of employment prior to the pandemic, the pandemic shocked us into a necessary change. It worked. Employees performed their tasks well and imaginatively. Productivity soared. Collaboration and teamwork did not suffer as it was suspected to do. New networking pathways were discovered. Commerce strengthened in ways unimagined. Prediction: work from home will continue to be a major feature of employment, perhaps as much as 35% or more when including hybrid arrangements – two days in office per week, two days at home, one day in field. This shift will likely make work on weekends a new normal as well.

Commuting: fewer people will join the mad dash to work like pre-pandemic days. Additionally, flexible hours will witness commuting hours spread out to fill the entire day. Reverse commuting will likely grow as people choose to live in more desirable or affordable places. Commuting becomes less an issue with flexible commuting and more work from home.

Real Estate Changes: office space demand will lessen as labor pools no longer need large office building hubs to conduct business. They can do ‘hubbing’ from anywhere they have internet and Zoom connection. Residential real estate demand will spread throughout a larger geographic ‘market’ thus reducing competition for many areas. How downtown areas will be used in the future is an unknown; culture, entertainment, education, government, or what? Office and residential patterns will settled into a better known routine eventually, but for now the market is pure change.

Shopping: Amazon made remote shopping a commercial force before the pandemic. With the pandemic, remote consumerism became the means to shop for everyday items like food, clothing, supplies and much more. We learned to buy big ticket items by phone and internet. We hired people over the internet. We bought and sold homes over the internet, too. Shopping is no longer the in-person entertainment it once was. Remember when ‘window shopping’ was a thing and done mainly when the stores were closed? Now we do it online, 24/7/365. This is our normal for shopping.

Technology Access: finally, universal access to technology is a must. Like public water, sewer, air quality, stormwater management and government, a modern society must also add technology access as a public utility. WiFi, internet and bandwidth/speed must be made available to all of us. It is the center stone of shopping, commerce, education and now medicine, too. Communication and news print as well. What are we waiting for? The new normal requires access to technology. No obstructions. Government: step into this arena and make it happen.

There are more areas we could cover, but those mentioned above demonstrate how the others will be driven to new normals. Creativity and invention come with change. Let us embrace it.

That is our normal.

May 10, 2021