The New York Times - USA (2020-12-02)

B6 N THE NEW YORK TIMES BUSINESSWEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2020 K

VIRUS FALLOUT

software for a bank.
The labor market has recovered
12 million of the 22 million jobs lost
from February to April. But many
positions may not return any time
soon, even when a vaccine is de-
ployed.
This is likely to prove especially
problematic for millions of low-
paid workers in service industries
like retailing, hospitality, building
maintenance and transportation,
which may be permanently im-
paired or fundamentally trans-
formed. What will janitors do if
fewer people work in offices?
What will waiters do if the urban
restaurant ecosystem never re-
covers its density?
Their prognosis is bleak.
Marcela Escobari, an economist
at the Brookings Institution,
warns that even if the economy
adds jobs as the coronavirus risk
fades, “the rebound won’t help the
people that have been hurt the
most.”
Looking back over 16 years of
data, Ms. Escobari finds that
workers in the occupations most
heavily hit since the spring will
have a difficult time reinventing
themselves. Taxi drivers, dancers
and front-desk clerks have poor
track records moving to jobs as,
say, registered nurses, pipe layers
or instrumentation technicians.
“Many of today’s unemployed
workers may find it harder than in
the past to find new jobs and ad-
vance through the labor market,”
Ms. Escobari wrote.
Covid is abruptly taking out a
swath of jobs that were thought to
be comparatively resilient, in
services that require personal
contact with customers. And the
jolt has landed squarely on work-
ers with little or no education be-
yond high school, toiling in the
low-wage service economy.
“The damage to the economy
and particularly to workers will
probably be longer lasting than
we think it is going to be,” said Pe-
ter Beard, senior vice president
for regional work force develop-
ment at the Greater Houston Part-
nership, an economic develop-
ment group.
What’s more, he said, Covid will
intensify underlying dynamics
that were already transforming
the workplace. Automation, for
one, will most likely accelerate as
employers seek to protect their
businesses from future pan-
demics.
The challenge is not insur-
mountable. Stephanie Brown,
who spent 11 years in the Air
Force, found her footing relatively
quickly after losing her job as a
cook at a hotel in Rochester, Mich.,
in March. She took advantage of a
training program offered by
Salesforce, the big software plat-
form for businesses, and got a full-
time job in October as a Salesforce
administrator for the New York
software company Pymetrics
from her home in Ann Arbor,
Mich.
Yet despite scattered success
stories, moving millions of work-
ers into new occupations remains
an enormous challenge.
Jared Sooper is also looking for
a change after losing his job last
March managing a restaurant in
the North Park neighborhood of
San Diego. Fleeing San Diego’s
rents, he and his fiancée packed
their things in a U-Haul trailer and
relocated to a converted storage
space under the deck of her par-
ents’ house near Providence, R.I.
Once there, Mr. Sooper, 37,
learned of an initiative financed
by the state government to train
workers displaced by the pan-
demic and connect them to job op-
portunities. In November, he fin-
ished a five-week program run by
Local 51 of the union for the
plumbing and pipe fitting trades
to become a welder.
“2020 seems to be turning
around,” Mr. Sooper said. “I’m
feeling pretty confident. If they
don’t take me for this one, there
are others I can apply to.” Still, he
couldn’t immediately find a union
job as a welder, so for the time be-
ing he took a job doing body work
for a company that makes eco-
friendly bus frames.
Derrius Gosha, 30, had been in
Los Angeles for only a few months
when the pandemic ended his job
on the sales floor of Bath and Body
Works in February. He is now
back at home in Birmingham,
Ala., living with his mother and
grandmother. John Restrepo, 25,
furloughed in March from his job
as a server at Tony’s Town Square
Restaurant in Disney’s Magic
Kingdom in Orlando, Fla., is stick-
ing it out in an apartment with his
two roommates. Barbara Xocoy-
otl, 57, furloughed in March from
her cleaning job at the Omni hotel
in New Haven, Conn., had to give
up her apartment and is living
with a daughter in New York.
All are waiting for the economy
to restore the jobs they have
known. “If there are no retail jobs,
I could work at a warehouse, and
I’m OK on a conveyor belt,” Mr.
Gosha said. “The only thing I
wouldn’t want to do is put on a
hard hat and go dig a ditch.” After
weeks of hunting, he landed a sea-
sonal position in the lawn and gar-
den section at Lowe’s.

Often, the old jobs just don’t re-

turn at all. As he searches for an

opening at CVS, or Walgreens, or

another restaurant in town, Mr.

Restrepo pins his hope on a deal

that his UNITE HERE union local

struck with Disney to offer the

workers it let go a first crack at

jobs once business returns, and

retrain them for other Disney jobs

if their old positions are termi-

nated. “Thinking optimistically,

by the summer of 2022, the major-

ity of us will be able to go back,” he

said.

Ms. Xocoyotl has a doomsday

plan in case the old jobs don’t re-

turn: to return to her hometown in

central Mexico to be close to her

mother. “I’ve been looking for a

job, but nobody calls me back, no-

body tells me anything,” she said.

At her age, she added, “people

don’t even ask what one is good

for anymore.”

Training has always been a

challenge for policymakers, and

the pandemic complicates match-

ing new skills with jobs. Austin

Urick, 31, went back to school af-

ter he lost his job last year selling

equipment for the oil and gas in-

dustry. He enrolled at San Jacinto

College near Houston to learn in-

strumentation and electrical sys-

tems. He expects to graduate this

month, certified to calibrate and

replace gauges and pumps used

by oil and gas companies.

The industry, however, has suf-

fered during the pandemic. While

he has some good leads, his job

hunt hasn’t yielded any offers. “It

is worrisome,” Mr. Urick said.

“But my Plan B is not just oil and

gas.” The instrumentation degree

can be taken in different direc-

tions. “I can work in an elevator

company or in a hospital, any-

where that has gauges,” he added.

“I can go down the street to Bud-

weiser.”

Harris County, where much of

Houston sits, lost about 160,000

jobs in the year through Septem-

ber. Using emergency money ap-

proved by Congress in the CARES

Act, it has enlisted community col-

leges and nonprofit groups to de-

velop training programs to move

3,000 workers whose jobs were hit

by the pandemic into more resil-

ient occupations: plumbing or ac-

counting, nursing or coding.

“Work force development was a

major priority when I came into

the office,” said Adrian Garcia, a

county commissioner whose dis-

trict is among the poorest there.

“Now, with the pandemic in our

midst, it is critical.” With the train-

ing program filling up, he is count-

ing on the county to find money to

expand it.

And yet at scale, it will be a con-

siderable challenge to assist

workers in the transition to a new

economy in which many jobs are

gone for good and those available

often require proficiency in so-

phisticated digital tools.

“We need a New Deal for skills,”

said Amit Sevak, president of Re-

vature, a company that hires

workers, trains them to use digital

tools and helps place them in jobs.

“President Roosevelt deployed

the massive number of workers

unemployed in the Great Depres-

sion on projects that created

many of the dams and roads and

bridges we have. We need some-

thing like that.”

Rhode Island is using stimulus

money from the CARES Act to

fund a training initiative that pro-

vides additional support for work-

ers — like child care and trans-

portation assistance — and gets

commitments from employers to

hire trainees. Gov. Gina Raimondo

thinks the pandemic offers an op-

portunity for something similar

on a national level.

But she acknowledges that this

is a heavy lift. “This stuff is easy to

say and really hard to do,” she

said. “We’re talking about transi-

tioning a whole economy, and

transitions are hard.”

Mr. Siminoski, for one, is hoping

that his transition from theme

park stage manager to movie elec-

trician pays off. But while he’s

waiting, he still has to put food on

the table. So for the immediate fu-

ture he’s thinking about going to

driving school to get a truck driv-

er’s license. “It’s expensive —

about $1,600,” he said. “But I think

training takes less than a month,

and it seems you can get a job

right away.”

What’s Left for Workers if Their Old Jobs Don’t Return?

Idled in Brooklyn in August. Jobs requiring human contact have been hit particularly hard, and taxi drivers’ skills may not readily translate to other jobs.

BRENDAN McDERMID/REUTERS

A line at a job center in Frankfort, Ky., in June. The pandemic is forcing many workers, particularly those in low-wage professions, to reinvent themselves.

BRYAN WOOLSTON/REUTERS

0% 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

%

–5

–10

–15

–20

–25

–30

–35

Accounting clerks

Computer

systems analysts

Dishwashers

Food prep workers

General managers

Mail carriers

Nursing and

home health aides

Office clerks

Preschool teachers

Primary school

teachers

Retail sales

workers

Stock movers

Waiters and waitresses

Child care workers

Share of workers who transition

into occupations that are growing

Decline in jobs

from the first

through the

third quarter

of 2020

Workers’ Transitions From Shrinking to Growing Occupations

Source: Brookings Institution THE NEW YORK TIMES

0

Note: The likelihood that workers in shrinking occupations can change to a growing occupation is based on the track record from 2003 to 2019.

Some of those hardest hit by job losses during the pandemic, like waiters

and preschool teachers, are in occupations from which it has been difficult

to move into new, growing fields.

CIRCLES ARE SIZED

BY SHARE OF TOTAL JOBS

FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE

GLOBAL ECONOMY

Even With Vaccines on Way,

The Recovery May Be Slow

The world will start to recover

only gradually next year from a

devastating global recession

brought on by the coronavirus

pandemic, but the revival is un-

likely to repair an income divide

that is leaving more people

around the world poorer because

of the crisis, the Organization for

Economic Cooperation and De-

velopment said Tuesday.

The organization, in its half-

yearly economic outlook, forecast

the global economy would grow

by 4.2 percent next year. Led by a

massive rebound in China, the

momentum is likely to pick up

only after the summer.

Even then, most economies will

be smaller at the end of 2021 than

they were at the end of 2019.

That’s because lockdowns to con-

tain the pandemic have carved $7

trillion out of global gross domes-

tic product, Angel Gurría, the

O.E.C.D.’s secretary general, said

during an online news confer-

ence.

The notable exception is China,

which curbed the pandemic with

aggressive quarantine policies. It

has rebounded quickly and will

end the year with growth of

around 10 percent, said Laurence

Boone, the organization’s chief

economist. South Korea, Sweden

and India have also weathered

the economic crisis far better

than most European countries

and nations in Latin America,

which have at times struggled to

contain the virus, the organiza-

tion said.

The crisis has also worsened in-

come inequality. Today, nearly

half of all low-income adults in the

37 countries that are members of

the organization have trouble

paying their bills, while a third

have had to get food from a food

bank. LIZ ALDERMAN

PUBLISHING

Top Book Trade Show

Is Canceled for 2021

As the coronavirus pandemic

forced cultural institutions to can-

cel events and performances,

BookExpo, the largest publishing

trade show in the United States,

held out for longer than most. Ini-

tially scheduled for May at the Ja-

cob K. Javits Convention Center

in New York, it was postponed un-

til July, then canceled and re-

placed with a virtual event.

Now, in a surprising shift, Reed

Exhibitions announced that it has

decided to cancel BookExpo for

2021, and to reinvent the trade

show going forward.

In a statement on Tuesday,

ReedPop, the pop culture event

organizer within Reed Exhibi-

tions, said that because of “contin-

ued uncertainty surrounding in-

person events,” it is ending its

current lineup and would solicit

feedback from publishers, book-

sellers and other partners as it

weighs how to structure the event

in the future.

It’s unclear how big BookExpo

and its related events will look in

the future. Reed provided few

specifics on Tuesday beyond say-

ing that they would include “in-

person and virtual offerings.”

Reed Exhibitions has under-

taken cost-cutting measures, in-

cluding layoffs, but many of its

planned conventions for 2021, in-

cluding comic conventions in Chi-

cago and Seattle, are still going

forward.

BookExpo has been a central

event for the publishing industry

for decades, dating back to when

the American Booksellers Associ-

ation Convention was founded in

1947. Reed, which puts on about
      500 events in dozens of countries
      each year, has run the event since


1948. ALEXANDRA ALTER

U.S. ECONOMY

2 Fed Officials Warn

Of Deepening Inequality

Two top Federal Reserve officials

warned on Tuesday that the pan-

demic economic fallout could lead

to greater inequality, and they

urged greater government sup-

port to prevent divides from wid-

ening.

“There is a great risk of the

pandemic making them worse,”

Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell said,

speaking before the Senate Bank-

ing Committee. He noted that

women and minorities had been

especially hurt by the crisis.

Mr. Powell’s colleague Lael

Brainard, a member of the Fed-

eral Reserve Board of Governors,

also voiced concern about the po-

tential for an uneven recovery in

a speech prepared for delivery to

the Chicago Community Trust.

Mr. Powell suggested Tuesday

that additional support could be

needed from both the Fed and

Congress to bridge the gap.

Ms. Brainard was even more

blunt. “It is vitally important to

provide a lifeline to hard-hit

households and businesses facing

the harsh reality of a resurgent

Covid second wave as a bridge to

the time an effective vaccine will

be widely available,” she said in

the prepared remarks.

JEANNA SMIALEK

Virus Briefing