Chattanooga Times Free Press

Virus causing financial pain even for people still working

- BY SUDHIN THANAWALA

ATLANTA — Getting her job back should have been a relief for Leesa Huddleston.

A kitchen worker at an Indiana casino, Huddleston returned in June after a three-month furlough caused by the coronaviru­s. She felt fortunate to no longer be among the roughly 30 million Americans who remain jobless and are now struggling with suddenly reduced unemployme­nt aid.

Yet the return of her job hardly ended Huddleston’s financial troubles. Her employer, its revenue shrunken by the loss of customers, cut her schedule to four days a week. That meant a $300 drop in monthly pay — money that, along with overtime, had allowed Huddleston to afford rent, a car payment and other necessitie­s. Now, she’ll have to decide what to stop paying when she runs through her savings.

“I go from day to day,” said Huddleston, 59. “I handle it better some days than others.”

Huddleston belongs to a category of Americans who are largely overlooked at a time when unemployme­nt is high and a critically important $600-a-week federal jobless benefit has just expired: People who still have jobs but whose financial struggles have neverthele­ss escalated in the face of the pandemic.

Some have endured pay cuts or have had their hours slashed. Others have been furloughed temporaril­y — without pay. Many just feel seized by fear that their job could vanish at any time or that their struggling employer will go out of business.

They are caught in the grip of a pandemic that has pummeled the economy, forcing lockdowns that closed businesses and leaving many people too worried about infection to travel, shop, gather in crowds or eat out — or barred from doing so by states or localities. Yet their predicamen­ts, as much as the wave of layoffs the virus triggered, speak to the dire impact the virus has had on the American labor force.

They don’t portend good things for the economy, said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressiv­e think tank, who notes that anxious consumers, whether they hold a job or not, typically cut back on spending, the primary driver of the economy.

“The insecurity of what has happened to people around them may lead people to save as much as possible,” she said. “And that could decrease spending in the sense that, ‘I don’t know what happens next.’ ”

Consider Ellen Boudreau, a 59-year-old bookkeeper in Manchester, New Hampshire. She’s become a self-described “miser” since her work hours were reduced after a six-week layoff and her husband, David, a lab technician, had his schedule cut to four days for several months — and then was furloughed every other week in July.

Her husband wants a new television to replace a projection model at their home. Boudreau, though, has pushed back. She’s worried, in part, about other expenses, including the possibilit­y of a costly trip to the veterinari­an for their 15-year-old Shih Tzu.

“He really wants the TV,” she said. “Normally, I wouldn’t have thought about it. We don’t have the security anymore of a job.”

In Atlanta, Sirnorris Mitchell was forced to dip into his savings to pay for diabetes medication after his work hours, too, were reduced. Mitchell had been trying to re-establish his independen­ce with the help of Homes of Light, a homeless services organizati­on connected to United Way. Then the coronaviru­s eliminated his part-time office job.

Having initially worked full time with a home-andoffice cleaning company this spring, Mitchell, 50, now barely gets even a few hours a week.

“When all this junk took off and they started closing businesses down and I couldn’t find work like I wanted to, it put a big impact on me,” he said. “And then when you got diabetes and stuff, it’s hard to deal with everything at once.”

The financial pressures of the still-employed come against the backdrop of a catastroph­ic toll of layoffs. The number of laidoff Americans who have applied for unemployme­nt benefits has topped 1 million for 20 straight weeks. All told, roughly 30 million people are out of work, the government says.

On Friday, the government said the economy added 1.8 million jobs in July, a pullback from the previous two months’ gains and evidence that the resurgent coronaviru­s is weakening hiring and any economic rebound. The hiring of the past three months has regained barely more than 40% of the jobs lost to the pandemic-induced recession.

The number of Americans who have endured wage cuts or reductions in work hours isn’t as definitive. But federal data, combined with economic research, puts the figure at around 11 million. In July, more than 7 million Americans reported that they were working part time because their hours had been cut — far more than the 2.8 million who said so in February — the government said.

And from March through June, businesses reduced the pay of an additional 6.8 million workers, economists at the University of Chicago and the Federal Reserve estimated in a study that relied on data from payroll processor ADP.

Overall, about half of Americans in a poll by The Associated PressNORC Center for Public Affairs Research released in July say they or someone in their household has lost some income since the pandemic struck. That includes 27% who say someone has been laid off, 33% who report someone has endured a reduction in hours, 24% who say someone has taken unpaid time off and 29% who say someone had wages or salaries reduced.

 ?? AP PHOTO/DARRON CUMMINGS ?? Leesa Huddleston talks about washing dishes and cleaning kitchens at a casino Aug. 3, in Shelbyvill­e, Ind.
AP PHOTO/DARRON CUMMINGS Leesa Huddleston talks about washing dishes and cleaning kitchens at a casino Aug. 3, in Shelbyvill­e, Ind.

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