Sign recession is growing: White-collar worker layoffs

When he started coughing last week, Andrew Kerr figured it was just a reaction to his marathon training. To be safe, the paralegal told his boss at a small east Tennessee law firm. But that got him barred from the office for 14 days, without pay.

The lost income stung. Kerr’s fiancee, a nurse’s assistant, makes far less, and money already was tight. So they lived off credit cards while the former Marine counted the days until he could return to work. But when he called Wednesday to check on his schedule, he was laid off.

As the coronavirus pandemic overturns the U.S. economy, the shock waves are being felt in industries well beyond the hardest-hit: travel, hospitality and restaurants. White-collar workers — tech, marketing and professional employees among them — are facing layoffs, pay cuts and furloughs as their companies sharply curtail operations or suspend them altogether.

“I didn’t think it was going to happen to me just because of where I worked,” Kerr, 29, said.

The coronavirus pandemic has sent the United States hurtling toward recession with startling haste, as dozens of states and cities have taken drastic measures to battle the fast-spreading disease that has claimed more than 27,000 lives worldwide. People are sequestering themselves and nonessential businesses have shuttered as communities adapt to social distancing, the best defense against infection. But as last week’s record-shattering 3.3 million jobless claims indicate, the near-shutdown is taking a toll in almost every corner of the U.S. economy.

White-collar workers, who make up a greater share of the economy than ever before, are increasingly getting caught in the fallout.

Blue-collar jobs, which generally involve trade, manufacturing and labor, had once been the backbone of the nation’s economy. But the shift toward automation and a more service-based economy in recent years has caused many of those jobs to disappear while professional, or white-collar, jobs in tech, business management and consulting have grown.