US CITIZENS SCRAMBLE TO FIND WORK AMIDST COVID-19
By: Hailee Vargo
2020. A year many want to go away, and a year many want to forget. Millions of people have been affected by Covid-19, and right now 2020 graduates are feeling the brunt of it. The pandemic has forced many local and nationwide businesses to shut down or reduce staff, dramatically crashing the job market. According to CNN, over “20.5 billion” jobs have been lost this year in the US. The job market has become so bad the White House itself has even acknowledged the damage.
The damage isn’t done and is expected to only get worse, in fact, by the end of 2021 we are expected to see the unemployment rate go back to 7.5%, but this is still not back to pre-pandemic levels. Not only are millions of Americans that were employed are now unemployed, but the college graduates that are looking to start their careers can’t find a place to begin in the career that they went to college for.
So what does this mean for our economy? Nothing good. Families who were used to spending a lot of money are now limiting the items they buy from basic necessities like food and water to luxury items like televisions and gaming consoles. The US savings rate has increased to about 13.1% which is the highest it's been since 1981, and since our economy has a huge stake in consumer spending this is a big deal.
College students are also facing a nightmare when it comes to the internships that they have spent the majority of their undergraduate years working with companies that they thought they were going to follow through with the job they had been promised. Students were later told that the job offers were rescinded, not due to their lack of skill or work ethics, but simply because the job was no longer available due to layoffs and buyouts because of the pandemic.
Companies tried to explain that the workers that had been there for ten, fifteen, or even twenty years have lost their jobs and were struggling for basic necessities such as food, house payments, auto payments, medications, not to mention they no longer had health insurance.
Some of the largest companies in the US including General Motors, Under Armour, Carmax, Dicks Sporting Goods, Cheesecake Factory, BestBuy, L. Brands (Bath and Body Works), Tesla, Disney, etc., together with other major companies, closed out the week ending on April 4th with approximately 8.2% or 12 million members of the US workforce having to apply for unemployment insurance. This is the highest level since 1967.
There have also been alarming college student mental health statistics. Since the start of the pandemic, 27% of college students have been diagnosed with depression. 57.7% of students have felt “overwhelming anxiety” in the past year. 39% of all students in the US report dealing with some kind of mental illness and only 9% of college students in the US decided to seek professional help. The United States needs to step up and provide help to those who do not have insurance because as young adults, you are no longer allowed on your parents insurance.
Works Cited:
Egan, Matt. “Here's When the US Job Market Will Recover.” CNN, Cable News Network, 9 May 2020, www.cnn.com/2020/05/09/economy/jobs-report-unemployment-coronavirus/index.html.
Blake, Suzanne. “The Class of 2020 Is Getting a Crash Course in Pivoting - Changing Their Career Outlook, Delaying Graduation - Whatever It Takes.” CNBC, CNBC, 10 July 2020, www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/its-a-tough-job-outlook-for-college-graduates-in-the-class-of-2020.html.
This blog is very informative. I figured that a lot of people were struggling with work because of the Corona virus, but I didn't know how bad it actually was. You did a very nice job of using statistics and charts to example what the actual damage was of COVID-19 on these workers.
ReplyDeleteI think losing your job can be hard for practically everyone, unless you’re lucky enough to move back in with your parents and have them support you again. But for most people that’s not an option, and they’re going to have to struggle on their own, trying to find a new job and manage their finances and lifestyle meanwhile. I definitely agree that the government needs to step up and start putting in more effort into supporting it’s citizens and giving them new jobs.
ReplyDeleteI also never thought about the internships that college students have. It clearly becomes very difficult to do, especially those in the medical field.
ReplyDeleteI agree that right now must be an extremely tough time if you are graduating college and looking for a job, especially since you can't be on your parents health insurance anymore. I didn’t realize that college students would get affected mentally by this too, so the mental health statistics are surprising. Hopefully as everything is opening back up again, those graduates will be able to find jobs to be able to support themselves. However, there is a pretty big dilemma with the health insurance aspect. If a college graduate were to catch Covid-19, how would they pay for the medical costs? They can’t get insurance due to lack of jobs and they can’t get insurance from their parents. It would be unfair for the health insurance companies to allow them to get back on their parents insurance because they would lose a lot of money. However, the college students shouldn’t really be forced to pay for it because they are probably still dealing with student loan debt and they don’t have any extra money. In this case, maybe the government would need to step in and do something similar to the stimulus checks to help them out.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Covid's effects on students having just graduated college this year or in the end of their college education must be so stressed out finding employment straight out of college. With the lack of internships, many students worry that they are going down a path that they aren't sure if they want to pursue. Students just out of college may be unsure of what they want to do, since they can't find a job but they're done with school, so then they just end up at another entry level job, which they may feel is a waste of their time. But yes, employment among Covid-19 is a struggle for every age level, especially college students entering the workforce for the first time.
ReplyDeleteI think the biggest issue with people losing their jobs is that peoples' wages aren't covered. In multiple European countries, for example, the governments covers the majority of most peoples' wages, so if they lost their jobs, they receive some regular compensation.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very well presented blog that helped me understand both the statistics and the emotional and mental trauma resulting from this pandemic. The way you were able to use the unemployment and financial statistics to explain the resulting mental health statistics was very fluid and comprehensive. We live in a very sad reality right now where there is a lot of mental illness, and unfortunately, a lot of it can be attributed to outside stressors such as the pandemic. In classes such as Economics or Personal Finance we only ever talk about the number and graphs and statistics, but I believe that looking at the social influences those things have is just as vital. You humanized economics in a very clever and mature way.
ReplyDeleteThis new data is concerning, but the part about how college students are unable to find jobs is especially concerning. The first years out of college are hard because the former students usually have little money in savings and a lot of debt, so they are especially vulnerable to unemployment.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that college students struggle at finding jobs is a real problem. When people first graduate from college, crossing the world from schooling to “on your own,” they’re extremely vulnerable and with their dept, can make their life a struggle. So when they can’t find the job that they just paid so much and learned for years about, then they’re life is a very big struggle and they’re in very great need of help.
ReplyDeleteThis is really concerning that the economy has fallen this much during the pandemic. No one expected this to happen all of a sudden. I feel really bad for the college students that were looking forward to their next step into the future. However, I’m sure they will find a solution to resolve this problem. Now that everyone’s getting the hang of virtual, I’m sure jobs will take action to make sure that these graduates get a chance to succeed.
ReplyDelete