The risk of permanent job loss weighs heavily on workers like MacKenzie Nicholson of Nottingham, N.H., who lost her job with the American Cancer Society in June after the pandemic cut into the organization’s fund-raising. Her husband, a service manager at a Jeep dealership, kept his job after a brief furlough, but his income is not enough to cover their monthly expenses. Ms. Nicholson plans to start picking up gig shifts with DoorDash and Uber in the evenings, once her husband gets home from work and can take over watching their two young children. “I’m making disgusting casseroles with everything I have in the fridge so I don’t have to go grocery shopping.”Lasting joblessness is a comparatively new problem in the United States. But economists once thought that the United States’ less restrictive, more dynamic labor market made it relatively immune.

Source: New York Times October 03, 2020 15:56 UTC