60-hour weeks, she says, but was repeatedly
rebuffed when she asked for a paycheck. After
four weeks, she’d had enough.
In recent weeks, Kouskoulas says she senses
the “quietness in the economy” that existed a
few month ago has lifted and there are more
opportunities. But she also worries some
employers will be consolidating roles, producing
fewer jobs with more responsibilities.
She’s prepared, too, for what she expects will be
“a long haul.”
“At the end of the day,” she says, “the only person
who’s going to get me out of this is me.”
Uncertainty ripples outward. There are so many
things that, because of it, simply can’t be done.
It spreads to those who’ve permanently lost
jobs as well as furloughed workers wondering
if they’ll be called back. “People may tell you
to retrain,” says Gimbel, the economist. “What
are you supposed to retrain for? You don’t
know what the economy is going to look like.
Everyone is frozen because it’s so unclear how
the situation is going to evolve.”
And long-term planning? Even murkier —
impossible, really, says Adam Ozimek, chief
economist at Upwork.
“We don’t know whether at the end of the year
there are going to be 15 million people without
a job or 5 million people,” he says. “From top to
bottom, every single person in the economy
is affected by this uncertainty in one way
or another.”
Job uncertainty is new for Flint, 53, the travel
agent. She’s never been unemployed, and it’s
“doubly scary,” she says, because she’s single.