New York's Mayor Warned That COVID Shutdowns Hurt Low-Skill Workers. He's Absolutely Right. Twitter Got Mad Anyway.

At a press conference Tuesday, New York City's new mayor, Eric Adams, urged local white-collar workers to start returning to the office a few days a week. Remote work and COVID shutdowns, he explained, had seriously hurt businesses that rely on commuter customers to survive.

This observation is obviously true, and plenty of data backs it up. But Adams angered people when he noted that many service workers don't have the option to work from home and don't have the skills for many office jobs: "My low-skilled workers, my cooks, my dishwashers, my messengers, my shoeshine people, those who work at Dunkin' Donuts—they don't have the academic skills to sit in the corner office." So instead of actually talking about the impact of COVID on these jobs, people are clutching their pearls in faux shock that the mayor had called them "low-skilled" workers. This was construed as an insult, rather than Adams pointing out the reality of COVID shutdowns have harmed New York's least-privileged workers.