At the end of March, Britney Ruby Miller, co-owner of a small chain of restaurants specialized in meat, confidently proclaimed that once the pandemic of the new coronavirus Having been controlled, her company planned to rehire all the employees she had to fire.
Now, Miller would settle for recovering three-quarters of the nearly 600 workers he had to let go by the end of the year. “I am being realistic,” he said. “Recovering 75% of our staff would be incredible.”
Regardless of whether it is realistic or pessimistic, more and more employees are arriving, reluctantly, to a conclusion: many of the workers who have been laid off amid the pandemic may not return to their jobs any time soon.
Some large companies will not have enough customers to justify rehire. And some small businesses may not even survive despite financial aid from the federal government.
If so, it would undermine the ray of hope in the brutal April jobs report the government released on Friday, in which a record number of 20.5 million people lost their jobs: a considerable majority of the unemployed – about 80% – considered that their dismissals were temporary.
That may be the case for some. The federal government could distribute many more financial supports to individuals and small businesses. And increased testing for COVID-19, not to mention an eventual vaccine or effective treatment, would give Americans more confidence to return to the restaurants, shops, airports, and movie theaters they used to frequent. That, instead, would allow companies to rehire the employees they laid off.
Still, the United States Congress remains divided on providing additional financial aid, a situation that has prompted some Republicans to express concern about the growing federal debt.
The chief economic adviser to the President Donald trump, Larry kudlow, said Sunday for the program “This Week” of the ABC chain that “many people would rather just pause momentarily“to assess the impact of the $ 2 trillion government financial aid package approved in late March.
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