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country began receiving eviction notices,
even in states with eviction moratoriums.
Small retailers closed to comply with
social- distancing orders while e-com-
merce sales, especially from the biggest
online platforms, have spiked. Amazon
reported a 26% jump in revenue in the
first quarter.
Assistance is most readily available
to those with lawyers and lobbyists on
the payroll. Companies like Carnival
and Boeing borrowed billions thanks to
inter vention from the Federal Reserve. In
mid-April, Carnival’s CEO told CNBC the
company could survive the rest of 2020
without any revenue. Meanwhile, Cindy
Kimbler, a cashier in Columbus, Ohio,
filed for bankruptcy after a collection
agency began garnishing her wages over
a payday loan she’d taken out to fix the
car she needed to get to work.
This yawning inequality will darken
the coming years. The U.S. is the world’s
largest economy, and so long as the major-
ity of Americans are stumbling through
a tunnel with no end in sight, its trading
partners will suffer too. It’s not an exag-
geration to say that inequality has the po-
tential to undermine democratic society
and threaten global stability.The rapid shuTdown of consumer-
facing businesses makes this downturn
unique. When cheaper foreign labor
lured manufacturing jobs overseas, the
U.S. became a service economy. In March
and early April, as the novel corona virus
began killing Americans, shops and
businesses closed overnight. Millions
of workers— waitresses and nannies and
hotel clerks and line cooks—were in-
stantly out of work.
College-educated employees who can
work remotely have, so far, largely been
spared, still drawing paychecks and
watching their savings grow as they cancel
vacations and dinners out and complain
about how boring it is to stay at home.
One analysis of unemployment- insurance
claims in California found that nearly 37%
of workers with just a high school diploma
have filed for benefits since March 15,
compared with less than 6% of those with
a bachelor’s degree.
That may change, of course. No group
is safe in a recession of this magnitude.
Yelp, Gap and Lyft each cut more than
1,000 corporate employees, and millionsPHOTOGRAPHS BY DANIELLA ZALCMAN FOR TIME