Americans Are Losing Work

Employers are cutting shifts, suspending work and starting to lay off workers as the new coronavirus devastates business across the country.

The Wall Street Journal reports companies from restaurant operators to wedding caterers have started to let workers go as they ratchet down operations. Many firms have moved cautiously to date, furloughing employees and moving workers to part-time status. But for many companies, economists say, layoffs are likely next.

More than 3,600 people, most of them from entertainment and leisure industries, have been laid off in the U.S. due to the pandemic, according to new data released Wednesday from Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., an outplacement firm. That count doesn’t include job cuts at bars and restaurants in more than a dozen states and some cities that face restrictions on operations.

Unite Here, a labor union that represents over 300,000 people working in hotels, gaming, food service, manufacturing, textiles, laundry, transportation and airports in the U.S. and Canada, said Wednesday it expects 80% to 90% of those workers to be laid off.

People who have lost jobs are filing for unemployment benefits, resulting in a surge of claims in some states. Kentucky typically handles 2,000 cases a week, but received 9,000 claims on Tuesday. State websites that handle benefits in New York and Oregon have malfunctioned due to higher traffic.

Shrinking schedules are happening as roughly 40% of Americans said they would have difficulty covering $400 in an emergency, needing to borrow the money from family or friends or put it on a credit card, according to a Federal Reserve Bank survey in 2018.