Across America are legions of Kelly Flints,
women and men who don’t know when they’ll
receive another paycheck — or if.
The coronavirus outbreak and resulting
economic upheaval have thrown millions of
lives into disarray. Industries have collapsed,
businesses closed, jobs disappeared.
Compounding the misery is a question no one
can answer: When will this all be over?
In recent congressional testimony, Federal
Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell repeated his
earlier warning: The strength of any recovery will
rely on the nation’s ability to contain the virus.
The outlook for the U.S. economy, he said, is
“extraordinarily uncertain.”
Uncertain. If 2020 had to be condensed into a
single word — and there are many, many words
to describe it — uncertainty would hover at
the top of the list. Uncertainty about health.
About the future. About the country itself.
And uncertainty about livelihoods and jobs
and economic security in a historical moment
where each day seems to bring a fresh wave of
unwanted developments.
America has faced economic calamity before,
most recently during the recession of 2008,
when the jobless rate soared to 10%. That pales
in comparison to the two crises that have cost
more than 160,000 American lives and ushered in
spiraling unemployment — 30 million job losses,
of which 17.5 million people remain unemployed.
“It’s not just the scope of the losses,” says Martha
Gimbel, an economist at Schmidt Futures. “Until
we have solved the public health crisis or have
a timeline ... none of us is going to know what’s
going on.”