Generations of Unemployment
From young Americans just beginning their careers to those closer to retirement, millions are stuck in limbo.
By Phil McCausland
June 30, 2020
(Cristiana Couceiro / for NBC News)
When Daniel Martinez drives by the car dealership in Houston where he worked as a field service technician, his 3-year-old daughter will point to it and say, “Look, Daddy’s work.”
Martinez, 28, had been earning enough money to support his wife and their daughter and was beginning to look at upgrading the family’s small apartment to a house. But he was laid off in April as coronavirus cases began to soar, and he lost his employer-provided health insurance. The dream of a new home vanished.
“Now I have to say, ‘No, I don’t work there anymore,” he said, recalling his response to his daughter. “I’m just trying to explain to her that, you know, ‘Daddy lost his job but I’m still looking.’ It’s rough.”
Martinez is one of more than 20 million Americans who have become unemployed because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced many employers to shut their doors and either furlough or fire employees.
Martinez, after six years of Navy service and three years in his most recent job, had high hopes for the trajectory of his life and his career. He loved the work he did and the community that it came with, but now he’s not sure if he’ll ever get it back.
“It was like a light switch,” he said. “Some days, I feel lost and hopeless because I don’t know what I can do.”
The number of people who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic is unprecedented: The biggest spike in initial unemployment claims in March, at 6.6 million, far surpassed the peak of the Great Recession. With the economic future remaining murky, unemployed workers in the United States, from young people beginning their careers to those closer to retirement, are facing a choice to weather the storm and hope their positions return or give up their chosen career altogether if they aren’t able to find something similar.
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Each week, the jobs report published by the Department of Labor earns prominent headlines in newspapers and functions as a key point of discussion on cable news channels and social media. But behind the columns and the panels of pundits opining about how to resolve this labor crisis is a growing number of Americans attempting to read the economic tea leaves and figure out where they belong in the U.S. job market.
Just last week, 1.5 million more people applied for unemployment, the 14th consecutive week in which states processed more than 1 million first-time applications. The unemployment rate was nearly 10 percent higher in May than it was a year prior, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The U.S. is officially in a recession, as the National Bureau of Economic Research announced in May. The effects are felt deeply by all age groups, but it has deeper implications for older Americans, who even now tend to go longer between jobs, including periods of high employment.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said as much when he testified before Congress in June, suggesting that Congress and the administration need to do more to address the economic fallout of the pandemic.
“I think there are going to be a large number of people who will not be able to immediately go back to work at their old job, or even in their old industry,” Powell told lawmakers. “There will be a significant group that is left over even after we get the employment bounce.”
Until then, many continue to rely on unemployment benefits, especially those that came with the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act that was enacted in March.
NBCNews