Long before SARS-CoV-2 emerged, humanity was already facing a challenging economic moment, with human jobs going to automation, AI, and machines for efficiencies. In the downward slope of the pandemic, a large percentages of the world's population was without work, and many are still in isolation and social distancing for bio-safety and health. This book explores how people in their respective localities (developed and less developed spaces) are adapting for a new economy through new understandings of the world and concomitant reconceptualizations of the self. There are the efforts at self-learning, retraining, apprenticeships, gig work, and higher education and intensifications of hobbyist skills. This work also explores how people are re-branding themselves for the new economy. There are applications of extreme measures for survival in a job-scarce zero-sum environment and if it is true that crisis brings out opportunities, this is a highly opportune moment for humanity to redefine and move forward.

This book explores the present moment with tens of millions of people around the world who are unemployed and/or under-employed and who need to meet basic survival needs in a time of high disruption. While people try to sort out issues at the macro- and meso- levels, people are responsible for their own well-being and need to engage in new thinking, revisioning who they are and what they are capable of, and they need to acquire new knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) to adapt. This book addresses how people are thinking of the present moment and the near-future, how people are surviving the present moment of sparsity and shortages, and how people are retooling themselves to adapt to a new economy.