Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas last week attributed more than 600 job cuts so far to the pandemic, including 145 drivers at the Port of Los Angeles and 18 at a toy company, both of which it traced back to the virus bringing Chinese suppliers to a temporary halt, the Financial Times reported. But the greater toll may be in industries that have nothing to do with global supply chains, economists believe. Ioana Marinescu, a labor economist at the University of Pennsylvania, predicted a collapse in what she called “human contact industries” such as restaurants, bars and theaters. The food services industries alone employ 12 million people in the U.S., up 30 per cent in the past decade. Concern about the human cost is growing with economic fears. A group of large New York landlords has agreed to go easy on eviction notices, while the Salvation Army warned that it was preparing for “a significant increase” in the need for emergency assistance from low-wage employees facing lay-offs. Travel and hospitality workers were among those most at risk, it noted, and these are industries that have driven much of the job growth in the U.S. since the last recession.
