Five years after the World Health Organization first described the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak as a pandemic, its effects are still being felt on the global economy.
COVID-19 and efforts to contain it triggered record government debt, hit labor markets and shifted consumer behavior. Inequality has increased, while remote work, digital payments and changes in travel patterns have endured.
Though the immediate shock has passed, COVID-19's legacy continues to reshape global economies and markets.
Here are some of the main impacts.
DEBT, INFLATION AND INTEREST RATES
After countries borrowed money to protect welfare and livelihoods, global government debt has risen by 12 percentage points since 2020, with steeper increases seen in emerging markets.
The pandemic sparked high levels of inflation, which proved to be a major concern in the 2024 U.S. elections. Fueled by post-lockdown spending, government stimulus packages and shortages of labor and raw materials, inflation peaked in many countries in 2022.
To offset rising prices, central banks raised interest rates, though the intensity of their interventions varied widely.
Sovereign credit ratings, which reflect a country's ability to pay back its debts, were driven lower as economies were shuttered and governments took on huge amounts of extra debt to fill the holes left in public finances.
Data from Fitch Ratings shows the average global sovereign credit score remains a quarter of a notch lower than it was when the pandemic started, reflecting financial challenges made worse by the pandemic, inflation and stricter financial conditions.
For less wealthy emerging market countries, the average remains roughly half a notch lower.
Lower credit ratings generally translate into higher borrowing costs on international capital markets.
LABOR AND TRAVEL SHIFTS
The pandemic caused millions of job losses, with poorer households and women hit hardest, according to the World Bank.
As lockdowns eased, employment regained momentum but with a considerable shift toward sectors such as hospitality and logistics due to the growing retail delivery sector.
Women's participation in the workforce fell in 2020, mostly due to female over-representation in hard-hit sectors like accommodation, food services and manufacturing, and the burden of caring for children staying home from school. However, the gender employment gap has slightly decreased since, data shows.
Travel and leisure habits also changed. While people travel and eat out as much as they did in 2019, an increase of work-from-home has reduced commuting in major cities such as London.
In London, use of both tubes and buses remains at around a million fewer journeys a day than pre-pandemic.
The airline sector was one of those hit worst by the pandemic, recording industry-wide losses of $175 billion in 2020, according to the global airlines body IATA.
Vaccination campaigns eventually resulted in the lifting of travel restrictions, allowing people back on planes. For 2025, IATA expects an industry-wide net profit of $36.6 billion and a record 5.2 billion passengers.
But travelers must contend with prices of hotel rooms which in many regions have outpaced inflation and remain well above 2019 levels.
In the first half of 2023, Oceania, the continent in the southern hemisphere that includes Australia and smaller nations like Tonga and Fiji, saw the highest price increases from the same period of 2019, followed by North America, Latin America and Europe, according to data from Lighthouse Platform.
Despite minor fluctuations, there is little indication that global hotel prices will return to pre-pandemic norms.
Office vacancy rates are also at record highs in many countries, the result of more remote and flexible work. In the U.S., central business districts had the largest rise in vacancies, which are still evident today.
USHERING IN A DIGITAL WORLD
New consumer trends developed during global lockdowns, as home-bound consumers often had no other option than to shop online. This caused an uptick in online purchases from 2020 that has since stabilized.
Analysts say that in Europe the rise in online sales has been coupled with an increase in selling space, as retailers invest in physical shops to stimulate both online and offline sales.
The space, measured in square meters, edged up almost 1% from 2022 to 2023, an increase that should extend to 2.7% by 2028, data from market research company Euromonitor shows.
Shares in digital and delivery firms led gains during the pandemic, alongside those of vaccine-making pharmaceutical companies.
Five years on, some pandemic-era gainers have lost most of their appeal, but others have enjoyed lasting gains as new markets enabled by the digital shift have opened up.
Despite the bursting of some bubbles and the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, which left the industry reeling, the value of Bitcoin has increased by 1,233% since December 2019, as people looked at new investment opportunities to cut the risk of market volatility.
Stuck at home and with more cash on hand, people also began investing more, with roughly 27% of total U.S. equity trading coming from retail investors in December 2020. Stockbroker TD Ameritrade took the biggest slice of the cake before being acquired by Charles Schwab in a $26 billion deal.
Another platform which gained popularity during the retail trading boom of 2021 is Robinhood, which became the platform of choice for people to pump money into meme stocks.
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
27 Comments
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jeffb
Remember it was the overreaction to the disease, not the disease itself, that caused the massive disruption.
Jay
Oh what, so now they're admitting the authoritarian lockdowns, heavily coerced vaccinations, and mass censorship - did more damage than the virus itself? The global economy was wrecked not by COVID-19, but by the power-hungry elites who used it as an excuse to tighten their grip, print endless money, and funnel billions to pharmaceutical conglomerates, while CRUSHING small businesses and personal freedoms that massively impacted mental health. And now they have the audacity to act like passive observers, as if they weren't the ones who orchestrated this entire disaster?
The only real "legacy" of COVID-19 is the blueprint for future control... but the good news is, the majority of us have woken up, so good luck trying to run the same playbook again. We're not having it.
I'veSeenFootage
Over 7 million people died worldwide, but yeah, it's the lockdowns that were a disruption! Sure.
Nope. You should read the article.
SomeWeeb
And the retconning starts already. Covid was the dry-run for a really scary disease and we all failed. It killed a lot of people, was responsible for as much as a 3% bump to the deathrate world-wide. But it could have been a lot worse. Black plague in the middle ages worse. Ebola worse. Whatever those kids ate from a Bat in the Congo worse.
Instead of preparing for the next threat though, most of the right leaning people are just crying that they had to stay home and actually let some poor people have some money for once. Vaccinations save lives, and if you believe otherwise you're just a giant baby afraid of tiny needles and you don't understand science.
The same people will try to tell you about the 1 in 250,000 people who had a reaction to something, in reality or placebo-type, and then buy a lotto ticket expecting to win. Nobody understands statistics and they think safety is fascism and fascism is safety. The only people harmed by the vaccine were actually in Japan where they had metal fragments in that one batch. Studies show vaccines prevented millions if not 10s-of-millions of deaths.
jeffb
The CARES act in the US incentivized hospitals to add covid-19 as a comorbitity to any death it deemed related, thus providing additional funding to that hospital. That institutional incentive paired with the rejection of the Barrington declaration which called for limited government response prolonged an otherwise insignificant disease. The mortality was massively inflated and the prevention measures were a farse.
ThonTaddeo
I'm a little confused by this line. Worldwide government responses to the pandemic have been harder financially on the poor than anyone else: catastrophic inflation plus job losses hit them the hardest. The whole situation has been a giant funneling of wealth from the poor and middle class to the ultra-rich.
jeffb
Japan did not have strict lockdowns. There was no enforcement only social shame for not following along with the charade. Private institutions like theme parks and hospitals made it their mission to enforce masking within their facilities. Businesses could voluntarily certify as "covid safe" and they would get the payout compensation for not serving alcohol or closing early. So no, no "lockdowns" in Japan.
virusrex
No such thing, world experts clearly say that in general the measures saved millions of lives that would have made the situation much worse. If anything countries reacted too mildly in many cases.
No, no part of the article does that, in fact measures prevented something much worse, economic disaster on top of millions more of unnecessary deaths.
Nor mask mandates, because the population has a much higher level of scientific literacy, meaning that people did what they were told by the experts was better for their communities without having to be forced to do it. The measures were in place, just done mostly voluntarily.
zulander
died "with" covid. Remember that.
Roten
So, what effects from the Korona are evident in Japan today? In my rural location, Covid did a big number on public transportation and on small tourist oriented businesses including rural ryokan and minshuku. Many places that were just scrapping by lost customers and went out of business. Bus services were cut during Covid and have not recovered. Cities and towns cut services and many have not be revitalized. And the young continue to flee rural areas to live in the large regional cities. Covid's long-term effect in southern rural areas of Japan may be the easing of visa requirements for South Asian workers and a hollowing out of some sectors.
I'veSeenFootage
Anyone who says that was not in Japan in 2020.
virusrex
Which is a well known factor that ends up causing the death, saying there are millions of children dying "with" malnutrition is a similar situation.
jeffb
Wrong.
False equivalence. Starvation and malnutrition are directly related. The vast majority of deaths were listed with covid as a comorbidity (died with), not as a cause of or necessarily related to the cause of death. This was incentivized by providing additional funding to hospitals experiencing high rates of covid infection.
Did they die? Yeah. Did their PCR test show positive? Yep.
virusrex
So what? covid and immune problems are directly related, covid and coagulation problems are also directly related, so are kidney problems or lung problems. etc.
Which again is something that very frequently happens with malnutrition. What you are trying to misrepresent is that something being listed as a comorbidity means it had no effect on the death, which is false. Incentivizing the correct identification of all the factors that contributed to a death is perfectly fine and desirable.
Did the infection contributed to their death? extremely likely as the epidemiological studies quickly demonstrated. That is the whole point.
virusrex
There is nothing in the article that represent the policies as a failure, much less unnecessary. When something is a clear consequence of the pandemic, and doing it prevented much worse consequences then trying to misrepresent the measures as failure makes absolutely no sense. Is like having someone that had to undergo a risky surgery as a last resort because of a 100% lethal condition and pretending the surgery was the one that killed the patient.
The experts say they did and can show the data to prove it, nameless people on the internet without any evidence are not really something that can disprove the valid authorities in the field.
https://telegrafi.com/en/masat-bllokuese-parandaluan-miliona-vdekje-nga-covid-19/
For this claim you need to demonstrate first that the measures were not the best possible under the circumstances at the time and second that they did not prevented something worse, without it you are just making a baseless claim that nothing bad would have happened without those measures, which contradicts what the experts say about it.
jeffb
To stay on topic, the reaction and excessive measures that were called out by the rejected Barrington declaration are what caused the lasting impacts of the pandemic period.
jeffb
Which experts? All experts? What about the ones that warned the overreaction would have long lasting negative effects on society especially those in lower socioeconomic status? That's what ended up happening.
virusrex
I disagree with your misrepresentation that this in any way make it the importance of covid inflated, when people with the same chronic diseases can live for decades well controlled or get covid and die in days it is very clear that listing it as a comorbidity has meaning and has to be incentivized to actually know how important it is as a cause of public health concerns.
So asymptomatic patients that suddenly die? is that your new argument? And what problem do you have if it is common? that only means it is much more likely to cause problems in a population. Do you also believe that if malnutrition is very common on a country it should no longer be taken into account as important?
The problem is that you keep making claims that the measures are excessive or unnecessary when that is the opposite of what the scientific consensus say about them. And instead try to use as an argument something that has been proved beyond any reasonable doubt to be criminally incorrect and that would have mean literally millions of extra unnecessary deaths if the authors succeeded in misleading more people with their unscientific ideas. Again, take a guess how many of the authors of the declaration said that covid would have no more importance by summer of 2020, you will be surprised at how many were this wrong.
virusrex
No, still just a baseless claim you are unable to support with any evidence. How about you search for any well recognized institution of science in the whole world that say the measures in general where unnecessary or did not prevented countless deaths? None say so? that is because the measures were justified and the negative effects are much less than what would have happened without them.
HopeSpringsEternal
Biggest impact by FAR has been on consumers across the globe. Everyone far more health conscience now which is a good thing if you think about it.
Younger cohorts suffered most with remote work and school and loss of their social lives. For middle aged in many cases, benefits were huge, especially more time with family and less time wasted with drinking parties etc.
Elderly, a mixed bag but largely negative, as many lost their freedom to enjoy their 'golden years', and living in far more fear due to having more health risk.
jeffb
The same authorities you fallaciously appeal are the very ones responsible for or beneficiaries of the overreaction I claim was unwarranted. The heavy handed opressive response was warned against by experts but that warning was disregarded. There's no way to know what could have happened because there was almost no legitimate observations made after the first wave. Just immediate excessive overreaction having lasting effects to this day.
virusrex
Every single public health system, university, big hospital, science institution of the world?
This is not an argument, it is just baseless accusations that you can never support with any evidence or argument, the same excuse antiscientific groups try to use to explain why there is no evidence of anything they claim and plenty of evidence to refute them. Flat earthers claiming all the astronomers of the world are in a global conspiracy of which they are beneficiary, creationists claiming the same for all paleontologist, etc. etc.
Evidence of this impossible conspriacy? none, once again Bro, just trust me!
This is the fallacy of appeal to ignorance, where you try to argue that since you could not possibly know something then the professionals of the world could not know it either. Surprisingly for many the experts of the world have many different kind of tools to know what would be very likely to happen, but since this proves the opposite of what you want to believe your argument is that they must be wrong (and apparently in a conspiracy as well). Completely wrong.
Jay
How about the ones who were silenced, censored, and de-platformed for daring to question the hysteria? The ones who signed the Great Barrington Declaration, warning that lockdowns would DEVASTATE the working class, increase poverty, and cause long-term harm to mental health and education? The ones who pointed out that prolonged school closures would set kids back for YEARS? The ones who correctly predicted that shutting down economies would cause inflation and supply chain collapses?
I'veSeenFootage
You know what the worst lasting effect of COVID is? Being dead from covid. I think if given the choice about 99.9% of the people who died from covid would happily take a few months of inflation over... Being dead.
jeffb
After all of that, there's still no denial that the response has had lasting negative effects just like was warned in 2020. Only the claim that "the experts responsible for the measures said it would have been so much worse!"
Jay
Yes, the only two options in life were "lockdowns forever" or "instant death by COVID." No middle ground, no nuance - just a binary choice. Never mind the 99.9% of people who didn't die from COVID but suffered from job losses, business closures, mental health crises, learning deficits, delayed medical treatments, and skyrocketing poverty. Nope, according to the Uber "Liberals", they should all just be grateful they weren't corpses!
virusrex
Again, these are the same people that claimed that on the summer of 2020 (at latest) everybody would already be completely immune to covid so people would no longer had to do anything.
When you try to use as an argument the opinion of people that were so horribly wrong you are also accepting that you have no better argument than that, this works much better against your point than for it.
The people that suggested isolation measures were the first ones that said this would have negative effects, but that those problems would be still much much better than not taking the measures and end up with at least the same economic damage on top of millions of extra deaths. Your misrepresentation of how the measures were presented when used is still false.
No such thing, the actual conclusion is that the negative effects are justified since it prevented things that were much much worse. And against this argument you have provided zero evidence to refute it. If you can't refute this argument calling it false do nothing, if anything it only makes it obvious you could not refute it.
Jay
Ah right, so the people who got everything else wrong - from infection fatality rates to vaccine efficacy - are suddenly infallible when it comes to predicting an imaginary alternate timeline! The same "experts" who said "TWO WEEKS to flatten the curve" but ended up dragging lockdowns out for years are now demanding blind faith in their hindsight justifications?
Oh and NOPE: no serious person claimed everyone would be immune by summer 2020. What people DID say is that natural immunity + early treatment + focused protection would have been FAR SUPERIOR to locking people in their homes and pretending the virus would disappear if we just destroyed small businesses hard enough. Instead, it sounds like you're cheering ob on the massive overreaction that wrecked economies, crushed mental health, and ruined education, all while COVID still spread anyway.
Talk about just moving the goalposts and hoping nobody notices.