The new world which emerged in Europe after the Black Death in the fourteenth century was very different from the world at the beginning of that century.  Among other things, the death of much of the laboring class left the survivors with a great deal of bargaining power, for a while, at least.  Income inequality diminished markedly.  Generally, some silver linings emerged, at least for a while.

I bring this up only as an excuse for posting this cool graph from Kevin Drum, which suggests that these silver linings will not be part of the post-COVID new world, even for a little while:

And, as Kevin notes, COVID's death toll is much higher among the much older, resulting in a smaller effect on the labor pool.  But that hardly matters; the new world will probably not be built on a new relationship between labor and management, as was true seven hundred years ago.