April 30, 2020 • 25 mins
With widespread shelter-in-place orders shutting down major cities and many states, the U.S. economy has come to an abrupt standstill. And after just five weeks, this COVID crisis has forced more than 26 million Americans to file for unemployment. On this episode of Next Question with Katie Couric, Katie talks to Victor Tan Chen, sociology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, and author of “Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy.” Chen explains what makes this unemployment crisis so unprecedented, why it’s underscoring pre-existing inequalities in the labor force and how the pandemic could change the job market — and who it could leave behind. Throughout the episode, we also hear from the people behind the unemployment statistics.
Read the Atlantic article ‘The Second Phase of Unemployment Will Be Harsher,’ by Victor Tan Chen and Ofer Sharone.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, Ruin. I'm Katie Kuric, and welcome to Next Question Today.
With widespread shelter and place order shutting down major cities
and many states, the US economy has come to an
abrupt standstill and one week in March, jobless claims jump
by three million, and after just five weeks, this COVID
(00:21):
crisis has forced more than twenty six million Americans to
file for unemployment. Hi. My name is Megan Guasory and
this is um my story. I live in a suburb
of Boston, Massachusetts, and I was furloughed from my job
on March nine. Hi. My name is Nicole Daniel UM
(00:45):
from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I was informed at the
beginning of April they, due to the economic downturn associated
with coronavirus, the field marketing team that I'm a member
of with being eliminated. Hi. My name is Bart Nelson
and I am from St. Louis, Missouri. My husband was
(01:06):
laid off from his company after fifteen years. It has
been difficult, and you know, neither one of us have
ever lost our jobs before, so this is this is
all new road for us. Hi. My name is Nancy Rasmussen.
I lost my job at Macy's. I live in Delaware,
(01:27):
and right now, that seems to be the least of
my problems. Throughout today's episode, we'll be hearing from some
of the people behind these unprecedented numbers. But first let's
get some context on what makes them so unprecedented. Most
of the estimates for the unemployment rates in April will
(01:50):
be around the lines of right, and at the peak
of the Great Depression, unemployment was maybe if you count
all the people that were in work relief programs as unemployed.
At the height of the Great Recession, we reached ten
percent unemployment. So we're at the very start of this
(02:13):
crisis and we're already seeing numbers that are accomparable to
the Great Depression. Victor tan Chen is assistant professor of
sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University. He studies labor markets, unemployment,
and social inequality. He's the author of the book Cut Loose, Jobless,
and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. He told me he's
(02:35):
never seen anything like this. The other thing, too, is
that the Great Depression, Great Recession, those are financial crises,
or at least they started as financial crises, and we've
had a lot of experience dealing with financial crises, and
we've kind of developed strategies in terms of monetary and
(02:56):
fiscal policy to deal with them. This is like uncharted
waters for us in terms of dealing with a pandemic
where the economy has to shut down in order for
it to save itself later on. Right, this is a
new kind of phenomenon, and so we're trying to figure
things out as we go policy wise, which leads me
(03:16):
to my next question, how will the coronavirus pandemic change
our economic futures? When we talk about unemployments and unemployment policy,
timing is everything right, and and the speed by which
this is happening is really concerning because we need to
(03:36):
get support to these households right away, because what we
know from unemployment is that its spirals and spirals in
terms of its psychological family and economic consequences. Victor tan
Chen says, all this can put a tremendous strain on relationships,
and the longer this goes on, the more dire the
(03:56):
financial consequences. If we're going to stop some of those
negative outcomes from a current, we need to introduce immediate relief,
and we and you know, to its credit, Congress past
legislation really quickly to deal with that and to top
up some of the benefits for unemployment. Unfortunately, many states
have been slow to provide that aid, and so we
(04:18):
we see in many states a huge backlog in terms
of benefits, and the expansions that were supposed to help
on these precariously employed workers like gig workers haven't even begun.
So I think timing is really essential in this to
prevent the crisis from spiraling out of control. Some of
(04:39):
the hardest hit sectors of the economy, like leisure, hospitality,
and the service industry, tend to employ people without college degrees,
people of color, immigrants, and those already living on less,
making this unemployment crisis particularly unfair. The Federal Reserve said
(05:01):
in two thousand seventeen that you know, four and anten
Americans did not have enough money. It's saved up to
cover a four hundred dollar expense of four h indre
dollar emergency. And so you have a large second population
that is already living paycheck to paycheck, and suddenly this happens,
devastating the sectors where they're concentrated in and uh, that's
(05:25):
leading to a lot of hardship that hopefully government policies
can ameliorate to some extent, but it's unsure how long
that support will last. There are also so many small businesses.
Now small business owners are in one category, but the
people who work for small businesses, they've also been hard hit,
(05:47):
have they not? Yes, And that is a major problem
right now, is that, uh, you know, the small businesses.
There are main street businesses, restaurants and bars and you know,
various establishments. They don't have the kind of reserves to
you know, weather the storm of this economic crisis, and
(06:08):
so you're seeing them lay off their workers, you know,
rather than keeping them on. Now there's some supports, you
know that the government has provided to kind of keep
that payroll going for a bit, but you know, access
to that has been spotty so far. And I imagine
what we'll see is a lot of these businesses failing
(06:29):
and a more consolidation in those sectors where Amazon or
Walmart or someone whoever already really devastated you know, main
streep America in terms of these small businesses taking more
and more of the share of those markets. There's also
the precarious workforce that you describe as people who are
(06:49):
doing jobs that don't have much security or have part
time jobs, so they're not counted in the unemployment figures
and they don't have benefits. So tell us about this
whole segment of the workforce that you term precarious. We're
talking here about workers who don't have the kind of
(07:11):
long term, full time employment that we associated with jobs,
typical traditional jobs, right where there's some kind of implicit
contract between employers and workers that you know that they
will stay there for a long time and and and
and work years at a particular company that has disappeared.
And you have instead a lot of workers who are
(07:36):
just working on gigs. Maybe they're classified as independent contractors.
They do certain projects for an employer, and then they
basically have the conditions of being real employees in terms
of how their work is dictated and and manage. But
the employers don't have to pay them benefits, don't have
to have any long term relationship with them, can get
(07:58):
rid of them whenever they want to. And so you
have increasing segment of the population about ten according to
some measures, that are fall into this category of either
you know, freelancers by choice or these kind of independent contractors.
Uh not involuntarily because companies have decided they don't want
(08:19):
a full time, a long term relationship with them. So
you have this segment of the population that has been
growing in recent years. And and gig workers like the
uber drivers and uh insta cart delivery people and so
on are a segment of this, but that don't really
have much in the way of protections or strength within
their bargaining positions in the labor market. And part of that,
(08:42):
too is the client of unions that used to provide
a voice for these workers and kind of negotiated the
full time, long term employment contracts of the past that
have disappeared now that unions have dwindled to a faction
of their former selves. Christ and Trump boasted about how
strong the economy was prior to the crisis, And I
(09:05):
know unemployment was low, but does that tell the whole story. No,
because what we have seen in recent decades is a
lot of folks have simply dropped out of the labor market,
dropped out of the labor force. Uh, they're no longer
looking for work in recent weeks because perhaps they've just
(09:25):
given up on finding a decent job anymore than said
they go on disability benefits or some of them have
gone back to school. But that's a small percentage of
the group that is uh, really what we're looking at
of of prime age workers who are suddenly out of
the labor force. And we actually saw before of the
COVID crisis, we saw some of the lowest rates of
(09:48):
labor force participation since the nineteen seventies, right, So we
had this problem beforehand of large segments of the population,
including prime age men, who had dropped out, and by
some measures, their rates of participation in the economy were
as low as they were at the tail and the
(10:08):
Great Depression. Right. So that's the kind of invisible crisis
that we had because those individuals aren't counted for in
our unemployment statistics, right. They they've dropped out of labor markets. Uh,
they're not looking in the last four weeks for work,
which is how we define the unemployed. And so we've
had this kind of hidden problem that was masked by
(10:30):
the increases in the stock markets and and the low
unemployment rates and so on. And it's also related to
things like the opioid crisis that has been going on
as well. Um, you know, there's just a lot of
economic despair that is concentrated in working class communities, many
(10:50):
of them are white communities in America's heartland that have
seen a loss of those good, pain often unionized jobs
that were the backbone of the American middle classrooms so
long and that have disappeared. So we need to also
recognize that these trends have been going on for quite
some time, even before the crisis. When we come back,
(11:11):
how jobs will forever change after COVID and who might
be left behind? No financial crisis, no recession has hit
(11:31):
the US this hard or this suddenly, and the impact
of the economic tsunami caused by the coronavirus is likely
to reverberate through the labor market long after COVID nineteen
leaves US, if it ever does. But Victor tan Chen
says it's not just a question of when the economy
will open up again, but who and how many will
(11:53):
be left behind when it does. What is more troubling
is that there's going to be a large segment people
who don't get rehired right, and they're gonna they tend
to be older workers, right, who are costly for pay rolls,
and so employers once they let go of workers are
going to rehire cheaper workers, right, or they're going to
(12:13):
impose certain technologies that reduce the noun and workers they need.
So you're gonna have the economy is gonna eventually return
where you're gonna have a segment of population who are
cut loose and who uh probably won't be able to
reconnect with the labor market later on. And so that's
the population particularly worried about because we saw in two
(12:37):
thousand and eight the emergence of this long term unemployee population,
many of who eventually left the labor force and are
kind of contributed to our larger joblesness this problem. But
that's probably going to happen in this regard to even
after the economy recovers, so a lot of people may
retire earlier than they anticipated. And also it's aims to
(13:00):
me that employers are going to have to space out employees,
They may not have room to have employees. There will
be more people working from home. How do you see
that figuring into sort of the workforce of the future
of the immediate future. Well, first of all, it's important
to recognize just how unequal um internet accesses in our country.
(13:24):
A federal communication Commission. You know report from two thousand
seventeen says that thirty percent of American households don't have
access to even a slow broadband connection. Right, So that's
a large segment of population that is uh, you know,
looking on their phones to access the internet, or just
just have a substandard access to it. So that presents problems.
(13:48):
And so much of you know, job seeking is online now,
and uh, I think that's going to create issues for workers,
especially given that it will be hard or you know,
for them perhaps too you know, hit the pavement to
find jobs. It's also important just to note that for
those who are able to telework, there's huge class and
(14:12):
racial divides in that regard as well. You know. Half
one estimate says that about half of those workers who
have college degrees are able to telework compared to about
fiftent of those without college degrees. Right, Uh, so there's
big differences. There's big racial differences in terms of African
Americans and Latinos uh being less able to do that. So,
(14:35):
um so if we move to jobs increasingly that requires
social distancing and require teleworking, certain segments who tend to
have less education, who tend to have lower incomes are
going to be left out of that new economy that's
emerging out of these new needs. And I just want
to underscore two that unemployment is not a negligible or
(14:59):
trivial now or it leaves scars for people, both psyschological
and economic. Right. Uh, it's comparable to other crises like
the death of a loved one or divorce in terms
of the real impact and permanent impact it has on
people's well being. Now when everyone is employed, Uh, those
(15:22):
kind of Uh, that kind of impact is lessened, right
because you know, people understand that they're all in this together.
But it still has these pretty profound consequences for individuals
and their families. And we should be worried about that
because it's going to be part of our reality for
quite some time. This this spike and unemployment. It can
(15:44):
have devastating effects and a ripple effect on people's mental health.
But it also seems to me that it's the kind
of thing that foments a revolution of sorts. Yeah, we
stay at a kind of important moments in our politics,
like which direction do we take some of the fear
(16:06):
and anxiety that everyone is feeling right now? Do we
channel it in a certain political direction. How are we
going to respond to this. Are we going to respond
collectively as a nation recognizing the fault lines that this
this crisis has suddenly made visible to us within our
labor market, or are we going to respond as we
(16:26):
did in past crisis? In two thousand and eight is
a good reminder of this, where yes, there was aid
in beginning their support. There was some sense that we're
all in this together at first, and then suddenly the
narrative change. Right, It was about how, you know, people
were being profligate and irresponsible and that was driving some
(16:47):
of the joblessness we were seeing. You know that that
led to the rise of the Tea Party, right, this
sense to that government was bailing out still called losers
or so people that had uh, you know, over extending
themselves at the expense of ordinary Americans. So you could
see the possibility of a divisive narrative emerging. And then
(17:07):
that's going to stop some of the necessary steps in
terms of providing that base of unemployment benefits and other
sorts of support that are essential to keep those not
only keep those households solvent, but also to inject some
more spending in our economy. While things are installed so
(17:27):
that uh, you know, employers don't collapse because of the
lack of consumer demand. Right, So all those things are necessary,
and unless we have the political will to push forward
these policies and extend them as long as they're needed,
we're going to pay some long term consequences for that. Hi.
(17:48):
My name is Kathleen and I've worked at the dental
Hygenisen California for almost forty years. I'm almost sixty five.
I have to underlying health conditions and I don't know
when it's going to be safe for me to go
back to work. I can't really look too far in
the future otherwise it's uh, it's really stressful thinking, you
know what, what's going to happen where we are a
(18:09):
dual income family and need to need to stay that way.
I can't even look at my retirement funds. I know
that it will show that I won't be able to
retire when I wanted to in three years. Um, my
retirement could be forced now, but I don't think my
funds will last a long time. Just gig for the future.
(18:35):
I don't have a movie when we come back how
we can help each other in these desperate Times. Hi.
(18:59):
My name as Many booker Um and I'm from Westfield,
New Jersey and have been the program jector for a
nonprofit grief support center for almost eight years. When COVID
nineteen appeared, we quickly realized that we were going to
have to pivot the way that we provide grief support
to our over four hundred participants. It only took a
matter of days to get our first calls from people
(19:21):
who had a fame family member who had died from
the illness, and they were looking for a whole different
level of support because the typical rachels and supports that
people received after a death were not available to them.
There were no in person weeks to those funerals. There
were no family and friends coming over to sit with them,
cooked meals and cry together. It was very overwhelming for
(19:43):
us as care providers. I honestly wasn't sure how much
rightcarious trauma I would be able to tolerate. But then
I was furloughed, and as much as the need was there,
the money was not. Besides the obvious anxiety that I
feel about potentially losing my job permanently, I feel the
most sad about not being able to support the fans
(20:05):
I have worked with for so long and as more
people that due to this illness. I long to be
able to support them as well. I feel like I
have something to offer during this pandemic, but I'm not
allowed to and that to be a loss for me
as well. Before I wrapped up with Victor Tanshen, I
(20:26):
asked what good, if any, might come from this experience.
He said, the most heartening lesson is perhaps that we
found strength and solidarity that we can do better with
a greater sense of community. We can respond to this
with a sense of compassion and grace. Right we could
respond to this with the understanding that life is not
(20:49):
a competition. That the threat to our own mortality kind
of crystallizes for us what really matters in our lives
and how important things that we take for granted, like
going to out our data day lives are to us.
So we could use this as a moment of reflection.
I think that a lot of Americans are doing that
right now. They're writing in their isolation journals, and they're
(21:10):
thinking about big picture things and using this moment to
reconnect with people around them. They're realizing that the kind
of competition of status and wealth that we're so engaged
in is somewhat paltry and petty in the in the
grand scheme of things, we could use this as a
source of motivation inspiration to be uh, you know, a
better country. And it really depends on leadership, and it
(21:32):
depends on people standing up and making sure that their
leaders do the right thing in that regard. That was
Victor tan Chen, who teaches sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University
and is the author of Cut Loose, Jobless, and Hopeless
in an Unfair Economy. I'd like to acknowledge all the
(21:55):
people who have written in and called in with their stories.
In this podcast, you heard the voices of Megan Ghazari,
Nicole Daniels, Barbed Nelson, Nancy Rasmussen, Kathleen Lange, Mandy Sucker,
and Amy Stewart. Hi. My name is Amy Stewart. I
(22:15):
really don't know what is going to come next. One
thing is for sure. I'm definitely at a cross roads. Well,
it is hard, and I am a certain I know
somehow we'll figure this out too. I grew up hearing
stories from my grandparents about it was like for them
to live through the depression. I think of them, I
think of my parents, I think of my friends, and
(22:37):
I think of my husband and I and all of
the things that we've vanished to get through before this.
One day, this too will be in my review mirror,
and I will sit around and tell our story to
our grandkids. In the past tense, there were so many
(23:03):
more that we heard from who are struggling, uncertain about
their future, or trying to stay positive despite everything, And
I just wanted to say I am so sorry for
what you all are going through and so appreciate your
sharing your experiences with us. Please continue to write in,
call in, reach out on social media. We may all
(23:25):
be isolating right now, but we're definitely not alone. And
that does it for this week's episode of Next Question.
For the most up to date information on the coronavirus,
please visit the CDC and World Health Organization websites. You
can also subscribe to my morning newsletter wake Up Call,
(23:46):
where we'll be profiling those affected by the pandemic. You'll
also be able to see some of those profiles on
my social media accounts Instagram, Facebook, and all the rest.
Until next time and my Next Question, I'm Katie Couric,
Thanks so much for listening. Stay safe and try to
stay positive. Next Question with Katie Couric is a production
(24:18):
of I Heart Radio and Katie Currik Media. The executive
producers are Katie Currik, Courtney Litz, and Tyler Klang. The
supervising producer is Lauren Hansen. Our show producer is Bethan Macaluso.
The associate producers are Emily Pinto and Derek Clemens. Editing
by Derrek Clements, Dylan Fagan and Lowell Berlante, Mixing by
(24:39):
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Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your
(24:59):
favorite show. Yes
Hi, Ruin. I'm Katie Kuric, and welcome to Next Question Today.
With widespread shelter and place order shutting down major cities
and many states, the US economy has come to an
abrupt standstill and one week in March, jobless claims jump
by three million, and after just five weeks, this COVID
(00:21):
crisis has forced more than twenty six million Americans to
file for unemployment. Hi. My name is Megan Guasory and
this is um my story. I live in a suburb
of Boston, Massachusetts, and I was furloughed from my job
on March nine. Hi. My name is Nicole Daniel UM
(00:45):
from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I was informed at the
beginning of April they, due to the economic downturn associated
with coronavirus, the field marketing team that I'm a member
of with being eliminated. Hi. My name is Bart Nelson
and I am from St. Louis, Missouri. My husband was
(01:06):
laid off from his company after fifteen years. It has
been difficult, and you know, neither one of us have
ever lost our jobs before, so this is this is
all new road for us. Hi. My name is Nancy Rasmussen.
I lost my job at Macy's. I live in Delaware,
(01:27):
and right now, that seems to be the least of
my problems. Throughout today's episode, we'll be hearing from some
of the people behind these unprecedented numbers. But first let's
get some context on what makes them so unprecedented. Most
of the estimates for the unemployment rates in April will
(01:50):
be around the lines of right, and at the peak
of the Great Depression, unemployment was maybe if you count
all the people that were in work relief programs as unemployed.
At the height of the Great Recession, we reached ten
percent unemployment. So we're at the very start of this
(02:13):
crisis and we're already seeing numbers that are accomparable to
the Great Depression. Victor tan Chen is assistant professor of
sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University. He studies labor markets, unemployment,
and social inequality. He's the author of the book Cut Loose, Jobless,
and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. He told me he's
(02:35):
never seen anything like this. The other thing, too, is
that the Great Depression, Great Recession, those are financial crises,
or at least they started as financial crises, and we've
had a lot of experience dealing with financial crises, and
we've kind of developed strategies in terms of monetary and
(02:56):
fiscal policy to deal with them. This is like uncharted
waters for us in terms of dealing with a pandemic
where the economy has to shut down in order for
it to save itself later on. Right, this is a
new kind of phenomenon, and so we're trying to figure
things out as we go policy wise, which leads me
(03:16):
to my next question, how will the coronavirus pandemic change
our economic futures? When we talk about unemployments and unemployment policy,
timing is everything right, and and the speed by which
this is happening is really concerning because we need to
(03:36):
get support to these households right away, because what we
know from unemployment is that its spirals and spirals in
terms of its psychological family and economic consequences. Victor tan
Chen says, all this can put a tremendous strain on relationships,
and the longer this goes on, the more dire the
(03:56):
financial consequences. If we're going to stop some of those
negative outcomes from a current, we need to introduce immediate relief,
and we and you know, to its credit, Congress past
legislation really quickly to deal with that and to top
up some of the benefits for unemployment. Unfortunately, many states
have been slow to provide that aid, and so we
(04:18):
we see in many states a huge backlog in terms
of benefits, and the expansions that were supposed to help
on these precariously employed workers like gig workers haven't even begun.
So I think timing is really essential in this to
prevent the crisis from spiraling out of control. Some of
(04:39):
the hardest hit sectors of the economy, like leisure, hospitality,
and the service industry, tend to employ people without college degrees,
people of color, immigrants, and those already living on less,
making this unemployment crisis particularly unfair. The Federal Reserve said
(05:01):
in two thousand seventeen that you know, four and anten
Americans did not have enough money. It's saved up to
cover a four hundred dollar expense of four h indre
dollar emergency. And so you have a large second population
that is already living paycheck to paycheck, and suddenly this happens,
devastating the sectors where they're concentrated in and uh, that's
(05:25):
leading to a lot of hardship that hopefully government policies
can ameliorate to some extent, but it's unsure how long
that support will last. There are also so many small businesses.
Now small business owners are in one category, but the
people who work for small businesses, they've also been hard hit,
(05:47):
have they not? Yes, And that is a major problem
right now, is that, uh, you know, the small businesses.
There are main street businesses, restaurants and bars and you know,
various establishments. They don't have the kind of reserves to
you know, weather the storm of this economic crisis, and
(06:08):
so you're seeing them lay off their workers, you know,
rather than keeping them on. Now there's some supports, you
know that the government has provided to kind of keep
that payroll going for a bit, but you know, access
to that has been spotty so far. And I imagine
what we'll see is a lot of these businesses failing
(06:29):
and a more consolidation in those sectors where Amazon or
Walmart or someone whoever already really devastated you know, main
streep America in terms of these small businesses taking more
and more of the share of those markets. There's also
the precarious workforce that you describe as people who are
(06:49):
doing jobs that don't have much security or have part
time jobs, so they're not counted in the unemployment figures
and they don't have benefits. So tell us about this
whole segment of the workforce that you term precarious. We're
talking here about workers who don't have the kind of
(07:11):
long term, full time employment that we associated with jobs,
typical traditional jobs, right where there's some kind of implicit
contract between employers and workers that you know that they
will stay there for a long time and and and
and work years at a particular company that has disappeared.
And you have instead a lot of workers who are
(07:36):
just working on gigs. Maybe they're classified as independent contractors.
They do certain projects for an employer, and then they
basically have the conditions of being real employees in terms
of how their work is dictated and and manage. But
the employers don't have to pay them benefits, don't have
to have any long term relationship with them, can get
(07:58):
rid of them whenever they want to. And so you
have increasing segment of the population about ten according to
some measures, that are fall into this category of either
you know, freelancers by choice or these kind of independent contractors.
Uh not involuntarily because companies have decided they don't want
(08:19):
a full time, a long term relationship with them. So
you have this segment of the population that has been
growing in recent years. And and gig workers like the
uber drivers and uh insta cart delivery people and so
on are a segment of this, but that don't really
have much in the way of protections or strength within
their bargaining positions in the labor market. And part of that,
(08:42):
too is the client of unions that used to provide
a voice for these workers and kind of negotiated the
full time, long term employment contracts of the past that
have disappeared now that unions have dwindled to a faction
of their former selves. Christ and Trump boasted about how
strong the economy was prior to the crisis, And I
(09:05):
know unemployment was low, but does that tell the whole story. No,
because what we have seen in recent decades is a
lot of folks have simply dropped out of the labor market,
dropped out of the labor force. Uh, they're no longer
looking for work in recent weeks because perhaps they've just
(09:25):
given up on finding a decent job anymore than said
they go on disability benefits or some of them have
gone back to school. But that's a small percentage of
the group that is uh, really what we're looking at
of of prime age workers who are suddenly out of
the labor force. And we actually saw before of the
COVID crisis, we saw some of the lowest rates of
(09:48):
labor force participation since the nineteen seventies, right, So we
had this problem beforehand of large segments of the population,
including prime age men, who had dropped out, and by
some measures, their rates of participation in the economy were
as low as they were at the tail and the
(10:08):
Great Depression. Right. So that's the kind of invisible crisis
that we had because those individuals aren't counted for in
our unemployment statistics, right. They they've dropped out of labor markets. Uh,
they're not looking in the last four weeks for work,
which is how we define the unemployed. And so we've
had this kind of hidden problem that was masked by
(10:30):
the increases in the stock markets and and the low
unemployment rates and so on. And it's also related to
things like the opioid crisis that has been going on
as well. Um, you know, there's just a lot of
economic despair that is concentrated in working class communities, many
(10:50):
of them are white communities in America's heartland that have
seen a loss of those good, pain often unionized jobs
that were the backbone of the American middle classrooms so
long and that have disappeared. So we need to also
recognize that these trends have been going on for quite
some time, even before the crisis. When we come back,
(11:11):
how jobs will forever change after COVID and who might
be left behind? No financial crisis, no recession has hit
(11:31):
the US this hard or this suddenly, and the impact
of the economic tsunami caused by the coronavirus is likely
to reverberate through the labor market long after COVID nineteen
leaves US, if it ever does. But Victor tan Chen
says it's not just a question of when the economy
will open up again, but who and how many will
(11:53):
be left behind when it does. What is more troubling
is that there's going to be a large segment people
who don't get rehired right, and they're gonna they tend
to be older workers, right, who are costly for pay rolls,
and so employers once they let go of workers are
going to rehire cheaper workers, right, or they're going to
(12:13):
impose certain technologies that reduce the noun and workers they need.
So you're gonna have the economy is gonna eventually return
where you're gonna have a segment of population who are
cut loose and who uh probably won't be able to
reconnect with the labor market later on. And so that's
the population particularly worried about because we saw in two
(12:37):
thousand and eight the emergence of this long term unemployee population,
many of who eventually left the labor force and are
kind of contributed to our larger joblesness this problem. But
that's probably going to happen in this regard to even
after the economy recovers, so a lot of people may
retire earlier than they anticipated. And also it's aims to
(13:00):
me that employers are going to have to space out employees,
They may not have room to have employees. There will
be more people working from home. How do you see
that figuring into sort of the workforce of the future
of the immediate future. Well, first of all, it's important
to recognize just how unequal um internet accesses in our country.
(13:24):
A federal communication Commission. You know report from two thousand
seventeen says that thirty percent of American households don't have
access to even a slow broadband connection. Right, So that's
a large segment of population that is uh, you know,
looking on their phones to access the internet, or just
just have a substandard access to it. So that presents problems.
(13:48):
And so much of you know, job seeking is online now,
and uh, I think that's going to create issues for workers,
especially given that it will be hard or you know,
for them perhaps too you know, hit the pavement to
find jobs. It's also important just to note that for
those who are able to telework, there's huge class and
(14:12):
racial divides in that regard as well. You know. Half
one estimate says that about half of those workers who
have college degrees are able to telework compared to about
fiftent of those without college degrees. Right, Uh, so there's
big differences. There's big racial differences in terms of African
Americans and Latinos uh being less able to do that. So,
(14:35):
um so if we move to jobs increasingly that requires
social distancing and require teleworking, certain segments who tend to
have less education, who tend to have lower incomes are
going to be left out of that new economy that's
emerging out of these new needs. And I just want
to underscore two that unemployment is not a negligible or
(14:59):
trivial now or it leaves scars for people, both psyschological
and economic. Right. Uh, it's comparable to other crises like
the death of a loved one or divorce in terms
of the real impact and permanent impact it has on
people's well being. Now when everyone is employed, Uh, those
(15:22):
kind of Uh, that kind of impact is lessened, right
because you know, people understand that they're all in this together.
But it still has these pretty profound consequences for individuals
and their families. And we should be worried about that
because it's going to be part of our reality for
quite some time. This this spike and unemployment. It can
(15:44):
have devastating effects and a ripple effect on people's mental health.
But it also seems to me that it's the kind
of thing that foments a revolution of sorts. Yeah, we
stay at a kind of important moments in our politics,
like which direction do we take some of the fear
(16:06):
and anxiety that everyone is feeling right now? Do we
channel it in a certain political direction. How are we
going to respond to this. Are we going to respond
collectively as a nation recognizing the fault lines that this
this crisis has suddenly made visible to us within our
labor market, or are we going to respond as we
(16:26):
did in past crisis? In two thousand and eight is
a good reminder of this, where yes, there was aid
in beginning their support. There was some sense that we're
all in this together at first, and then suddenly the
narrative change. Right, It was about how, you know, people
were being profligate and irresponsible and that was driving some
(16:47):
of the joblessness we were seeing. You know that that
led to the rise of the Tea Party, right, this
sense to that government was bailing out still called losers
or so people that had uh, you know, over extending
themselves at the expense of ordinary Americans. So you could
see the possibility of a divisive narrative emerging. And then
(17:07):
that's going to stop some of the necessary steps in
terms of providing that base of unemployment benefits and other
sorts of support that are essential to keep those not
only keep those households solvent, but also to inject some
more spending in our economy. While things are installed so
(17:27):
that uh, you know, employers don't collapse because of the
lack of consumer demand. Right, So all those things are necessary,
and unless we have the political will to push forward
these policies and extend them as long as they're needed,
we're going to pay some long term consequences for that. Hi.
(17:48):
My name is Kathleen and I've worked at the dental
Hygenisen California for almost forty years. I'm almost sixty five.
I have to underlying health conditions and I don't know
when it's going to be safe for me to go
back to work. I can't really look too far in
the future otherwise it's uh, it's really stressful thinking, you
know what, what's going to happen where we are a
(18:09):
dual income family and need to need to stay that way.
I can't even look at my retirement funds. I know
that it will show that I won't be able to
retire when I wanted to in three years. Um, my
retirement could be forced now, but I don't think my
funds will last a long time. Just gig for the future.
(18:35):
I don't have a movie when we come back how
we can help each other in these desperate Times. Hi.
(18:59):
My name as Many booker Um and I'm from Westfield,
New Jersey and have been the program jector for a
nonprofit grief support center for almost eight years. When COVID
nineteen appeared, we quickly realized that we were going to
have to pivot the way that we provide grief support
to our over four hundred participants. It only took a
matter of days to get our first calls from people
(19:21):
who had a fame family member who had died from
the illness, and they were looking for a whole different
level of support because the typical rachels and supports that
people received after a death were not available to them.
There were no in person weeks to those funerals. There
were no family and friends coming over to sit with them,
cooked meals and cry together. It was very overwhelming for
(19:43):
us as care providers. I honestly wasn't sure how much
rightcarious trauma I would be able to tolerate. But then
I was furloughed, and as much as the need was there,
the money was not. Besides the obvious anxiety that I
feel about potentially losing my job permanently, I feel the
most sad about not being able to support the fans
(20:05):
I have worked with for so long and as more
people that due to this illness. I long to be
able to support them as well. I feel like I
have something to offer during this pandemic, but I'm not
allowed to and that to be a loss for me
as well. Before I wrapped up with Victor Tanshen, I
(20:26):
asked what good, if any, might come from this experience.
He said, the most heartening lesson is perhaps that we
found strength and solidarity that we can do better with
a greater sense of community. We can respond to this
with a sense of compassion and grace. Right we could
respond to this with the understanding that life is not
(20:49):
a competition. That the threat to our own mortality kind
of crystallizes for us what really matters in our lives
and how important things that we take for granted, like
going to out our data day lives are to us.
So we could use this as a moment of reflection.
I think that a lot of Americans are doing that
right now. They're writing in their isolation journals, and they're
(21:10):
thinking about big picture things and using this moment to
reconnect with people around them. They're realizing that the kind
of competition of status and wealth that we're so engaged
in is somewhat paltry and petty in the in the
grand scheme of things, we could use this as a
source of motivation inspiration to be uh, you know, a
better country. And it really depends on leadership, and it
(21:32):
depends on people standing up and making sure that their
leaders do the right thing in that regard. That was
Victor tan Chen, who teaches sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University
and is the author of Cut Loose, Jobless, and Hopeless
in an Unfair Economy. I'd like to acknowledge all the
(21:55):
people who have written in and called in with their stories.
In this podcast, you heard the voices of Megan Ghazari,
Nicole Daniels, Barbed Nelson, Nancy Rasmussen, Kathleen Lange, Mandy Sucker,
and Amy Stewart. Hi. My name is Amy Stewart. I
(22:15):
really don't know what is going to come next. One
thing is for sure. I'm definitely at a cross roads. Well,
it is hard, and I am a certain I know
somehow we'll figure this out too. I grew up hearing
stories from my grandparents about it was like for them
to live through the depression. I think of them, I
think of my parents, I think of my friends, and
(22:37):
I think of my husband and I and all of
the things that we've vanished to get through before this.
One day, this too will be in my review mirror,
and I will sit around and tell our story to
our grandkids. In the past tense, there were so many
(23:03):
more that we heard from who are struggling, uncertain about
their future, or trying to stay positive despite everything, And
I just wanted to say I am so sorry for
what you all are going through and so appreciate your
sharing your experiences with us. Please continue to write in,
call in, reach out on social media. We may all
(23:25):
be isolating right now, but we're definitely not alone. And
that does it for this week's episode of Next Question.
For the most up to date information on the coronavirus,
please visit the CDC and World Health Organization websites. You
can also subscribe to my morning newsletter wake Up Call,
(23:46):
where we'll be profiling those affected by the pandemic. You'll
also be able to see some of those profiles on
my social media accounts Instagram, Facebook, and all the rest.
Until next time and my Next Question, I'm Katie Couric,
Thanks so much for listening. Stay safe and try to
stay positive. Next Question with Katie Couric is a production
(24:18):
of I Heart Radio and Katie Currik Media. The executive
producers are Katie Currik, Courtney Litz, and Tyler Klang. The
supervising producer is Lauren Hansen. Our show producer is Bethan Macaluso.
The associate producers are Emily Pinto and Derek Clemens. Editing
by Derrek Clements, Dylan Fagan and Lowell Berlante, Mixing by
(24:39):
Dylan Fagan. Our researcher is Gabriel Loser. For more information
on today's episode, go to Katie Currek dot com and
follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Katie Kurk. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your
(24:59):
favorite show. Yes
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Katie Couric
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