Big shifts: lessons from the 1980s for the labour market after Covid-19

The economy-wide restructuring that set in after the crisis of the 1970s harbours some important lessons for the imminent post-Covid world, Bob Hancké argues. Many industrial sectors that provided working class families with stable incomes disappeared, taking the life chances of those left behind with them. But that did not happen everywhere and understanding the origins and consequences of the different adjustment paths can help avoid a second generation of losers from economic restructuring.