As we all know with what is going on in the world, I think that an important issue to talk about is unemployment. Everything shut down and people staying home, the economy is going under worse than ever. People are not able to support their families with no job and “Non-essential” jobs will possibly not come back from this pandemic. The so called “essential” jobs are desperate for workers to help because they are overrun with people getting their own essential needs.
Obviously jobs in warehouse working and shipping are very essential currently through this pandemic. As an example, companies such as Amazon have hired over 100,000 new employees due to the high demand of products in the last month. CVS and Dollar Tree have both hired over 50,000 new employees each during the outbreak. Although this might just seem like a bandaid compared to the total of unemployed people currently, seeing that there are still attainable jobs during these drastic times gives hope to all.
As of March of 2020 unemployment rates were 4.4% which was at the high end of the range of 3.5% to 4.5%. Having high unemployment rates means that businesses cant find enough workers to keep operating at a full capacity, which could slow economic growth. Being unemployed for “Non-essential” businesses took a turn for the worst for people who need to provide for their families and everyday life. The bright side of all this pandemic mess is the people who are lucky enough to file for unemployment and get to get paid so they can provide food. The number of unemployed people who were jobless less than 5 weeks increased by 1.5 million in March to 3.5 million.
Federal Reserve Bank of St.Louis forecast that unemployment could rise to 30% during the pandemic. With how long this virus is supposed to stay the unemployment rates could go above and beyond what it’s at right now. We haven’t seen this big of a tragedy since the Great Depression and in fact, this pandemic has the potential to be worse than the Great Depression and any recession that followed it.
In conclusion unemployment rates have skyrocketed through these past couple months and people have become desperate to find jobs and file for unemployment. When it comes to not being able to work in “Essential” businesses you could potentially turn to freelance work as a source of income. Although the TWC (Texas Workforce Commision) does not require you to make any job searches while on Unemployment during the pandemic, that shouldn’t stop anybody from applying for those “essential jobs”.