Towards a new economic golden age?

What if the economy was on the eve of a new golden age?

This is the conviction of many economists who bet on the still poorly evaluated effects of the digital revolution.

A digital revolution that has accelerated dramatically with the Covid.

Compared to anything we anticipated before, the world is digitizing much faster.

Hence the scenario detailed by the McKinsey firm in a report unveiled today, that of a golden age that could be compared to what the world experienced during the "Thirty Glorious Years", after the Second World War. global.

The idea is that the Covid has accelerated the famous digital transition in many sectors.

By observing what is happening on the ground, in companies, in real life, McKinsey consultants note that companies have digitized their activities 20 to 25 times faster than what was thought possible before the crisis.

They cite, for example, a European distribution group which recorded in eight weeks of online sales the growth it would have achieved in three years before the pandemic.

In fact, at the end of the Covid crisis, productivity could experience a J-curve, in other words strong growth in the years to come, whereas before the crisis, the dominant scenario, in developed economies, was rather that of a stagnation of productivity and therefore of growth potential.

It is therefore an optimistic scenario that draws.

Yes, but under certain conditions anyway: for the digitization of the economy to be positive, skills must follow.

We must therefore invest in training even more and even faster than what we anticipated until now.

The McKinsey consultants rightly insist on this point because it will be necessary to re-qualify the workforce on a massive scale, in all sectors.

Otherwise, this hope of an economic golden age will give way to another scenario, in which the gaps in skills and destinies will widen.

We can avoid it!