USA TODAY International Edition
Pay bills, or feed the kids?
For millions without jobs, ‘ it’s not a long walk from here to the brink’
MIAMI – Roselande Guerrier lies in bed each night, waiting for her cellphone to display 7: 30 a. m., the time the Florida unemployment office opens.
“Every number they give me, I try, but they’re always busy,” she said.
Guerrier, 36, has spent 13 years changing sheets and scrubbing bathrooms as a housekeeper at the Fontainebleau hotel, the iconic Miami Beach resort. At night, she would do the same at the Cadillac Hotel & Beach Club, a nearby resort. Both those jobs vanished on March 23 when the hotels closed because of the COVID- 19 pandemic.
Guerrier is one of the millions of Americans who
“I feel like I don’t know when it’s morning, I don’t know when it’s night. I haven’t slept since I was laid off.” Roselande Guerrier, Miami
have lost their jobs during the pandemic. Millions more have been furloughed, seen their hours reduced and their salaries cut in the greatest economic contraction in more than a decade.
USA TODAY spoke with Americans from California and New York – two of the states hit hardest by the economic fallout – and a dozen cities in between to document what the explosion of unemployment has meant for the nation’s workers.
Desperate to hold on, Americans are selling off assets, tapping into their savings and taking out loans. Their cash is running out – and so is their hope.
“I feel like I don’t know when it’s morning, I don’t know when it’s night,” Guerrier said. “I haven’t slept since I was laid off.”
Gone in a matter of days
In the early days of March, there were just over 100 confirmed coronavirus cases nationwide and people largely continued their regular routines.
On March 11, change came quickly when the World Health Organization officially declared COVID- 19 a pandemic. In a matter of days, a couple in New York City saw their income vanish.
Kate Chumley was told she would no longer be writing for a series of award shows, a $ 12,500 contract. Days later, her husband, Liberty Ellman, began to see his own bookings steadily peel away. The professional guitarist and composer was supposed to perform in venues across Europe, gigs that would have collectively paid roughly $ 13,000.
They understood why everything was shutting down. But the economic slump was jarring for their family, including their two daughters, ages 6 and 9.
They didn’t pay their $ 2,650 rent in April, trying to maintain everything they could in their savings account.
Banking on faith
March 16 started like any other day for Candy Bey, a mother in Newark, New Jersey, who has run a child care center out of her home for 29 years.
That week, the White House issued guidelines calling on Americans to avoid social gatherings of more than 10 people. By the next day, the mayor had ordered nonessential businesses closed.
Her husband, a shuttle bus driver, continued working. But Bey worried about how long her family could go on without her earnings. She had been collecting $ 125 per child per week. She has four children at home: a 9- year- old, 12- year- old twins and a 17- year- old.
“It’s been rough,” said Bey, 51. “I just hold on to my faith.”
Her former clients call when their child wants to hear her voice or see her face. That’s how she ended up on the cellphone one recent morning coaxing 2- year- old Najayla to go potty.
“My worst fear,” Bey said, “is that I won’t be able to open my home back up to my children.”
Worried about the long term
Across the Hudson River in New York City, bar owner Joe Sweigart was struggling to get by after Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered most businesses to close. Bars were allowed to remain open for pickup and delivery.
Sweigart and his partner, Mike Vacheresse, decided to make a go of it at Travel Bar in Brooklyn, where they specialize in old- fashioned cocktails. They make enough to pay rent and utilities but had to lay off three workers.
He worries a longer outbreak will be too much to overcome as customers lose their jobs and can no longer justify buying pricey whiskey and bourbon.
“It’s not a long walk from here to the brink for everyone,” he said.
‘ I would give all that money back’
More than 1,000 miles away in Roseville, Minnesota, Nick Clark, a 26- yearold restaurant manager, started his day by telling a dozen employees of Lucky’s 13 Pub that they no longer had a job. They would become part of the 3.3 million Americans who filed unemployment claims that week.
A couple of days later, Clark and another manager were told they were being let go, too.
He receives $ 500 a week for unemployment from the state and $ 600 a week from the federal emergency package. It’s enough to pay his bills.
“I would give all that money back to go back and feel safe working,” he said.
Work or you won’t get paid
Shortly after Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced a statewide stay- athome order on March 23, Laura Gonzalez hunched over her phone and carefully read the message from one of the three families for whom she worked as a nanny in Seattle.
If she wanted to stay employed, the parents said, she would have to violate the state order and continue coming to their house to care for their children.
After tossing and turning all night, Gonzalez woke up the next day and texted her answer. “I am so sorry but after a very bad night I have decided to follow the stay at home order,” she wrote.
The family wrote back that they understood her decision. Then they stopped paying her.
Her other employers cut her off, too, not even paying her for the work she had already done.
They still call her to talk to their kids, to video chat when the children are restless. But Gonzalez, 48, who is using her credit card to cover her expenses, said they’ve never once brought up money.
She and her son are eating tuna to save on expenses. She has no savings.
Holding out hope
In Panama City, Florida, Emilio Rivamar lost his job on March 27.
That same day, Trump signed a $ 2.2 trillion stimulus package that included $ 1,200 payments to laid- off workers, plus $ 600 a week for those who qualified for unemployment benefits. But as an undocumented immigrant from Argentina, Rivamar, 30, doesn’t qualify for assistance.
He lives with three other workers in a hotel room, wondering how he will survive the shutdown. He started working as an Instacart delivery man, frequently using the Google Translate app on his phone to communicate with his shoppers.
“This is a country of a thousand opportunities,” he said. “Something is always going to work out.”
Life suddenly upended
As the calendar turned to April, the coronavirus was spreading faster than ever.
The world topped 1 million confirmed cases. The U. S. topped 200,000. By April 4, another 6.6 million people filed new claims.
In Naperville, Illinois, Rachel Metcalfe’s life was starting to unravel.
First came the furlough, where her hours were cut at her social media marketing job. Soon, the 22- year- old learned she likely had coronavirus. While testing for COVID- 19 is supposed to be free, Metcalfe said she was billed $ 11,000 for her hospital stay. She launched a GoFundMe effort to cover the bill.
“I cannot believe how quickly my life went from normal to complete pandemonium,” she said.
A loved one falls ill
In Los Angeles, Hilda Lopez also lost her job. She worried she would lose her brother, too.
COVID- 19 shut down his kidneys, forcing him onto a dialysis machine. Then it shut down his heart. For two minutes, before the doctors were able to revive him, he was technically dead at 46 years old.
Lopez, 47, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, had been working for her brother in a garment factory when the pandemic arrived. After their shipments of cloth, sewing thread and other materials from China stopped in early January, they shut down.
She cut off the cable and internet in the one- bedroom apartment she shares with her 19- year- old daughter. She stopped buying groceries and relied on whatever she could scrounge up at food banks. She missed her April rent payment.
To keep calm, she plays Christian songs on her guitar. Sometimes, she turns to a refrain her brother would always say: “If we keep thinking like poor people, we’ll always be poor. But if we think positive, we’ll overcome anything.”
Finally, good news arrived. After two weeks on a ventilator, her brother was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital where he struggled to speak but was breathing on his own.
One payment from foreclosure
Just a few months ago, the Pauls were riding high.
Giovanni and Sharquana Paul quit their jobs in finance and social services to open my CBD Organics, their own store selling CBD wellness and beauty products in Denville, New Jersey. They were selling so many lotions, gummies, teas and chocolates that they ordered $ 25,000 worth of product – triple the usual order.
Then the pandemic came.
The Pauls dipped into their savings to cover expenses. While Giovanni, 41, tends to the trickle of orders that come in, Sharquana, 40, cares for their two children.
On April 5, the couple applied for a small business loan under the federal emergency relief package. Hotel chains, restaurant chains and even the Los Angeles Lakers were approved in the first wave of funding, but the Pauls and scores of other small businesses were left out.
“It’s tough. No one plans for a pandemic,” Giovanni Paul said.
‘ They want their payment’
In Wilmington, Delaware, Jewel Fennell is one mortgage payment away from losing her home. The IT contract worker had been struggling to find freelance work when she made the agonizing decision to feed her children and miss another mortgage payment. She had missed several payments in 2019, and her dreams of catching up evaporated as her gigs dried up in March. Then the bank called.
“When I heard the words ‘ foreclosure,’ if felt like my soul was leaving my body,” Fennell said. “I told the mortgage bank that I was impacted and they pretty much told me they don’t care. They want their payment.”
She began asking for donations on Twitter. “You pretty much have to beg,” she said.
One politician’s view
U. S. Rep. Raul Ruiz, a Democrat who represents the desert communities east of Los Angeles, said calls to his office have tripled since the outbreak. More than 4.9 million Americans lost their jobs in the second week of April.
“We may all be in this together, but we’re not on the same boat. Some are on a rowboat barely holding on and some are on the yacht,” he said.
Fighting for the same jobs
In California, Eleanore Fernandez directed her 12- year- old daughter to turn off the Christmas lights she keeps aglow in her bedroom. Fernandez, who was laid off from her job at a catering company and whose husband lost his freelance jobs doing sound production, said they’ve cut off their HBO and have been eating less meat at dinnertime.
“My daughter likes ramen, so that’s good,” Fernandez said.
When she looks for work, she downplays her experience and previous salary. “People are vying for the same jobs, even if it’s not what they want.”
Which payment to make?
Back in Florida, Guerrier, the housekeeper who lost both of her jobs, is down to $ 300 in her bank account. She’s trying to figure out which bills to pay.
The $ 192 car insurance payment that’s coming due? The cellphone and home internet bills? Forget about the $ 1,450 rent payment that was due on May 1 – she can’t afford it. “I don’t know what I should do,” she said.
Shelters full: ‘ I already checked’
With each week of job losses, lawmakers across the nation confronted a dark debate: allow more economic suffering, or lift quarantine orders and risk more Americans getting sick.
For Emma Whelan, the uncertainty has made it impossible to plan for what might come next for her business, Astro Lab Brewing, in Silver Spring, Maryland. On April 20, she received a lifeline when her small business loan was approved. But the $ 85,000 she received will only cover eight weeks of payroll. The program stipulates that the loan will be forgiven only if all 13 of her employees are back to work by June 30.
“There are some huge flaws” in the program, Whelan said.
A couple of days after Whelan received her loan approval, Peaches Watson, 64, dashed around her small Caribbean restaurant taking beef patties out of a glass case and spooning cabbage into a plastic to- go container.
Watson has been working “triple time” as head chef, cashier and dishwasher at Peaches’ Kitchen since March 17. That’s when she had to lay off four employees. She has tried to apply for aid from the federal relief package for small businesses, but the line was so jammed she couldn’t get through.
“Some of us that need it more are the ones that are getting left behind.”
Shelters full: ‘ I already checked’
In Athens, Georgia, Labria Chandler has been waiting for her relief check to arrive.
The 24- year- old mother of three was homeless when she landed a new twobedroom apartment and a job as a line cook making $ 9 an hour in December. By March, she was unemployed again, a COVID- 19 economic casualty.
“It’s very scary. I have nowhere to go,” she said. “The homeless shelters are full. I already checked.”