About Half Of Working Households Lost Income Due To Coronavirus, New Poll Shows
Source: PBS/AP
WASHINGTON (AP) — About half of all working Americans report some kind of income loss affecting themselves or a member of their household due to the coronavirus pandemic, with low-income Americans and those without college degrees especially likely to have lost a job, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Sixty percent of Americans now say the national economy is “poor,” an alarmingly swift reversal from the 67% who called it “good” in January. The spike in pessimism has followed a stock market collapse and the closures of businesses around the country as regular economic activity has been halted in an attempt to limit the number of COVID-19 deaths to hundreds of thousands instead of millions.
The income losses include pay cuts, unpaid time off and reduced hours, as well as actual lost jobs, with 23% of adults who had work when the outbreak started saying they or a member of their household have since been laid off. A third of those in households making less than $50,000 a year say they or a household member have lost their job. “It’s terrible and it’s going to get worse,” said Bill Ardren, 75, a retired community college vice president from Minnesota. “The stock market is down. Unemployment is up. Stores are shutting down. I don’t see any bright lights in the economy right now.”
The new AP-NORC survey results come as the Labor Department said Thursday a record 6.6 million Americans sought jobless benefits last week, a doubling of the previous record set just the prior week. Those figures suggest the United States lost about 6% of its 152 million jobs in half a month...
Read more: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/about-half-of-working-households-lost-income-due-to-coronavirus-new-poll-shows
- People gather at the entrance for the NY State Department of Labor offices, which closed to the public due to the coronavirus outbreak in the Brooklyn borough of NYC, March 20, 2020.
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