Could the COVID crisis have reversed the balance of power in the labour market?

For permanent inflation to appear in OECD countries, employees would need to have a much stronger bargaining position, enabling them to obtain significant wage increases due to rising commodity prices and companies’ hiring difficulties. The COVID crisis would therefore have to reverse the balance of power between employees and companies in the labour market. Is that possible? This will be the case if the recruitment difficulties are real and lasting, i.e.: If there is a lasting decline in the labour supply (the participation rate); Companies are unable to offset it by increased productivity gains. When we look at the situations of the United States, the United Kingdom, the euro zone and Japan, we see that this configuration seems to appear only in the United Kingdom. In the United States, productivity is picking up; in the euro zone and Japan, the participation rate is not falling.