Hungry and Unemployed Americans Face Even More Uncertainty
At least 30 million Americans have recently filed for unemployment in the US, representing at least 18% of the 164 million Americans who are part of the labor force. I know everyone keeps throwing around the word “unprecedented” but, well, let’s see just how unprecedented this really is.
That tiny red sliver on the right is the spike in unemployment claims during the last month or so. The scary thing is that this chart will continue to become outdated as companies realize they won’t be able to stay afloat and start laying off even more people. Airbnb recently announced they’re planning to cut 25% of their workforce, just one example of how badly they expect this crisis to affect the global tourism industry moving forward.
Before this crisis, an unemployed person in the US could expect to be in search of a new job for an average of 5 months. If you compare it to the last economic crisis, the Great Recession, we see that the average during the peak of that downturn was 40 weeks (or about 9.2 months). In other words, the average unemployed person could expect to be in search of a job for about 9 or 10 months, before landing a new opportunity (see the image below). I didn’t find any specifics about whether the new jobs were comparable to the old ones in terms of wages.
The peak of that crisis happened between 2011 and 2012, and we have slowly recovered to levels that we saw right before covid-19. The general consensus is that this crisis will be much, much worse. The only glimmer of positivity, and the reason why there’s still optimism in the stock market even as businesses report record losses and unemployment numbers soar, is the hope that this crisis is temporary and the entire global economy will bounce back to where it was before, even if it takes a couple of years to get there.
How long can people survive being unemployed?
As we all know, Wall Street is not the economy. An online user described the Dow Jones Industrial average as “a chart of rich people’s feelings,” and I couldn’t think of a more appropriate analogy. The wealthiest 10% of Americans own about 84% of all stocks.
Hungry Americans are flocking to food banks in higher and higher numbers across the country. This crisis is putting at mortal risk the nearly half of American families who can’t cope with an unexpected $500 emergency. This crisis could leave many Americans unemployed for much longer than 10 months on average. And if that’s the case, then what? Will people take to the streets? Will they adapt to a new “poorer” reality? Will they give up in despair?
Protest and riots, but not from who you expect
According to Laurie Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been trying to warn the world for decades about how unprepared we’d be for a pandemic like this one, predicted that the mixture of poverty and wealth concentration would lead to years of “collective rage.” But that’s not what we’re seeing at the moment, at least not the way she envisioned. The anti-lockdown protesters aren’t protesting wealth inequality, broken social safety nets, and welfare for those less fortunate among us. They’re not even protesting for their right to go back to work. They’re protesting to force YOU to go back to work, so you can give them haircuts, and serve them drinks while they go bowling. There’s a saying that goes, “when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression” and boy, do they feel bigly oppressed.
It’s likely that the disparity between hungry and wealthy Americans who don’t like being inconvenienced will eventually come to a head. For right now, there are practical consequences to the disparity: The less fortunate are at higher risks of contracting covid-19, and less likely to follow health guidelines, putting everyone around them at higher risk. As Cheryl Bell put it, “You can’t self-contain if you don’t have a home. You can’t wash your hands if you don’t have a sink.” Bell is the executive chef at Miriam’s Kitchen, a non-profit in the Washington DC area that provides meals to people in need. Our own Julianna Forlano got the chance to interview her on our daily Twitch and FB livestream show:
A new normal
One of the great and terrible things about humanity is our ability to adapt to any circumstance. It’s a great trait that helps us cope with changes and uncertainty in life. But it can also be a terrible trait that allows injustice to creep into society and become the new normal. Are these newly unemployed facing a new normal of lack of social safety nets, food and housing insecurity, and a job market that never recovers? Hopefully the next few months will provide more clarity.
