The “essential workers” — truck drivers, the food workers — were acting as a servant class, making life possible for the supposedly inessential ones. Teachers did not want to be thought of in this way, but many parents who struggled to simultaneously work and proctor Zoom school from home concluded that teachers are in fact more essential than the pizza-delivery guy. There was another category, never officially named, but it was large, and people in this group surely recognized the judgment made by governments and most of society: They were expendable. Mostly, these were workers in restaurants, bars, and the hospitality industry. The COVID recession hit hardest against the working-class women who dominate in these fields. But not all expendable workers were low-wage earners. Expendable workers also included many small-business owners and entrepreneurs who operate locally and in person, rather than on the Internet. It included highly skilled workers such as airline pilots, many of whom, during the lockdowns, lost their certification to fly, and who are now being rushed back to work through recertification of their credentials. These workers and businesses have been sustained by the closest thing we’ve tried to a universal basic income. And the industries that are trying to hire them back are having trouble scaling up because of a labor shortage and the slowness of customers to return to their old habits.