The pandemic’s economic toll — shuttered storefronts, empty office buildings — fell harder on American workers than on their counterparts in much of Europe. That wasn’t entirely unexpected, since the U.S. gives companies maximum flexibility to respond to changing circumstances. Even before the Covid-19 shutdowns, when U.S. unemployment was at a 50-year low, American workers had reason to be insecure about jobs moving overseas, getting taken over by robots or simply not paying enough to cover ho