Uncertainty clouds virus-related job losses

On Behalf of | Mar 23, 2020 | Bankruptcy

All across the United States and the world, people are struggling to figure out how to shift their lives to accommodate the coronavirus pandemic. It seems that nobody is immune to the impact that the outbreak is having on society, but the effects may vary greatly from person to person and household to household.

The breadth of the pandemic has all but halted much of what people consider normal activity. For many people now, there are no movies to see in theatres, no plays or concerts to attend, no restaurants or bars to go out to and even no malls to walk or shop in. Flipping this reality from the perspective of the consumer to the perspective of the people who worked at movie theatres, playhouses, arenas, restaurants, bars, retail stores and more illustrates just how deeply coronavirus is penetrating life as it was once known.

The vast and swift loss of jobs will undoubtedly hurt people across many sectors. Yahoo Money reported that the number of people filing for unemployment or other job loss benefits in the week ending March 14, 2020 spiked a dramatic 33% from just one week prior. The worst may not even have hit yet. According to the Economic Policy Institute, as many as three million workers in the U.S. could be out of a job by the time summer rolls around.

At this point, there is no way for anyone to gauge when or if they will be called back to work because businesses have no way to know when medical professionals and government officials will declare it safe to resume operations. That paints a potential bleak financial picture for countless people.