“For a lot of those furloughed workers, a non-
trivial number will have no job to go back to,
because the company they worked for will
have failed or will need fewer workers than
they used to,” said Claudia Sahm, a former
Federal Reserve economist who is now director
of macroeconomic policy at the Washington
Center for Equitable Growth.
In March, MGM Resorts let go 63,000 employees
and described them as furloughed, meaning
temporarily laid off. Yet this week, the company
acknowledged that many of those people will
become permanently laid off by Aug. 31. The
hotel and casino operator didn’t provide
precise figures.
“We were optimistic at the time of the initial
layoff in March that we would be able to
reopen quickly,” Laura Lee, head of human
resources, said in a layoff notice letter to the
state of Michigan. “However, we have had to
reassess our reopening date, given the duration
and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
In some ways, Miller, the restaurant owner, is
more hopeful than she was when the shutdowns
began: The states her company operates in —
Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee — have begun
to gradually reopen portions of their economies.
Customers are phoning to see when they can
make reservations. She hopes to reopen the
five Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouses and two other
restaurants the company operates by early June.
Yet business won’t be returning to what it
was before. In Kentucky, the restaurants
will be limited to 33% of capacity. They
are putting six feet between tables in all
their restaurants, thereby limiting seating.