Layoffs, Job Losses — COVID-19 Impact Expected to Play Out Over Months
You don’t have to get infected by the coronavirus to see it have a painful impact on your life, as many workers – or former workers – have discovered. Christine Prichard, a freelance photographer based in Birmingham, has seen the impact of COVID 19 in a couple of ways. First, her teenage son is in the Dominican Republic and she’s eager to get him back home, even though that would mean two weeks of quarantine with him. But like many others, Prichard is seeing her business affected by the pandemic, as well. She frequently shoots photos of corporate events, and late last month, at an annual celebratory event for a trade group, she saw an early sign that the pandemic was going to have an economic downside for her work. “It was their annual meeting to kind of celebrate their sales. And at that meeting every year they would announce where they would book their annual trip for the top sales people of this product. And there was a guy that had to announce that they were not going to book the trip, pending what’s going on with coronavirus,” she recalled. “He said, ‘It's just too iffy. We don’t want to lose deposits. We’re being super-careful.’” That, Prichard said, was “kind of the first little wind I got that, ‘Oh. This could really be an issue.’” Since then, she said, “I haven’t done an event in a couple of weeks.” From gig workers, to teachers to even health care workers and others, many are finding that the pandemic has reached into their pockets. The pandemic has economic forecasters talking about recession in the wake of massive jobs losses. The headlines are about plants closing, unemployment claims rising, the government working on details of stimulus relief to American workers – and failing to come to terms. An NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll said that by last Wednesday, “nearly 20% of U.S. households have experienced either a layoff or a reduction in work hours because of the coronavirus.” Unemployment filings are rising significantly. Preliminary Alabama Department of Labor numbers show that more than 17,000 people filed for unemployment on Sunday and Monday, the Associated Press reported. In the week that ended March 13, that number was 1,434. Read more.
