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The Australian’s Adam Creighton believes that the COVID-19 shutdown will deliver a productivity dividend for Australia:
If there’s a serious silver lining to lockdowns it’s that businesses, especially large ones, will become more efficient, freeing up resources. That spells lay-offs, which will be painful for the workers concerned, but ultimately beneficial if they end up engaged more productively than pushing up costs at a bank or utility, causing higher prices ultimately for everyone else.
The long period of having staff work at home — seemingly successfully — was an experiment that would otherwise not have been conducted.
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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.