REOPENING U. S. WILL MEAN ALL KINDS OF NEW JOBS

Thermal scanners in Utah and Maryland. Contact tracers in San Francisco. Decontamination technicians in Miami.

Meet the people needed to keep the post- COVID economy running.

In the wake of a pandemic that’s put millions of Americans out of work, a new crop of jobs is emerging. Companies racing to get back to business are creating roles to keep employees and customers safe from a highly contagious virus — positions that may become even more in demand the longer time passes without a vaccine or treatment.

“There is going to be this constant experimentation with new ways of doing certain kinds of jobs,” said Guy Berger, the principal economist at job networking site Linkedin.

These roles, of varied levels and pay grades, are unlikely to significantly offset the more than 36 million jobs that were idled in U. S. lockdowns. Still, as many furloughed employees begin to return to offices and job sites, they will encounter new co- workers with responsibilities inconceivable before the outbreak.

Nearly every industry is looking for new types of workers to prevent the virus’s spread, said Jeffrey Burnett, chief executive of Labor Finders, which connects industrial employers with hourly workers. He’s seeing demand for jobs such as social- distancing monitors at construction sites, entrance watchers at nursing homes and Plexiglas installers for offices.

Large companies are evaluating ways to return to work that may bring in new jobs or reposition old ones. Amazon. com Inc., for instance, plans to check the temperatures of staff and visitors to its offices when they reopen, and is hiring lab workers for its own virus tests. Jpmorgan Chase & Co. is considering adding elevator attendants to prevent too many people from pushing buttons, people familiar with the matter said last month. Mcdonald’s Corp.’s guide for its restaurants includes having an attendant manning self- serve drink stations that are open during peak hours.

Thermal scanners — temperature takers — are already among the more common roles needed, said Debra Thorpe, general manager for Americas operations at Kelly Services. The staffing company placed hundreds of those jobs at workplaces that stayed open during the shutdown and anticipates thousands more when people return to offices, she said.

One of those taking a job was Mark Scofield, 67, who screens workers entering a large retail distribution site in North Salt Lake, Utah. The retired Air Force special agent works 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., making US$ 20 an hour. Even though his age could make him vulnerable to COVID-19, the 6-foot, 6-inch former military investigator says he’s not worried because “I haven’t been sick in years.”

Another key area is contact tracing, which could create as many as 250,000 jobs in the U. S., said Dante Deantonio, a labour market economist with Moody’s Analytics. His estimate is based in part on the ratio of 81 tracers per 100,000 residents utilized in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak started.

Retailers that have been open throughout the lockdowns have already shifted workers to positions like cart wipers, door monitors and ensuring customer compliance with social distancing measures. That type of hiring is poised to accelerate, said Mathieu Stevenson, CEO of Snagajob, which helps almost half a million companies find hourly workers for open jobs.