One year after the outbreak of the New Guinea virus, many Americans are still struggling financially. Pictured here is Kansas City resident Logan DeWitt, who is worried about raising his nine-month-old baby on his wife’s salary because she is unemployed.
The Associated Press and the Center for Public Affairs Research (AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research) released a poll on the anniversary of the Epidemic, showing that a year after the epidemic struck, the economic recovery has been uneven, with about 40 percent of U.S. respondents still feeling the pain of unemployment or a sharp drop in income affecting the economy.
The poll provides further evidence that the epidemic is affecting the lives of Americans, at least financially, but the results vary mostly by the type of work and income of respondents affected by the epidemic; African-Americans and Latinos, as well as young people, are the most affected, with some experiencing their second major economic crisis as adults.
Kennard Taylor, a 20-year-old African-American college student at Jackson College, said, “We were already in a difficult situation, and the epidemic pushed us down.”
Taylor lost his job as a campus cafeteria attendant in the first week of the epidemic and had to move back Home with his Family because he was struggling to pay his rent and car payments while studying.
The poll shows that half of Americans experienced at least one loss during the epidemic, 25 percent had family members displaced, and 31 percent had fewer hours at work; overall, 44 percent said someone in their family had lost income due to the epidemic and that it could impact their family finances.
The poll results reflect recent economic data; Labor Department data show that about 745,000 people applied for unemployment benefits in the week of February 22, and about 18 million people remain unemployed.
Thirty percent of Americans say household income is lower now than when the outbreak first began, while 16 percent say it is higher and 53 percent say it has not changed.
The poll reflects what some economists call a “K-shaped recovery” (K-shaped recovery), in which Americans’ wealth is spread out.
The white-collar class was able to work from home under the impact of the epidemic, but the entertainment, restaurant and tourism industries were hit hard; by contrast, the poor had a harder Time getting out of the economic mire than the rich.
Logan DeWitt, a 30-year-old government employee, was able to work from a distance, but his wife, a childcare worker, was out of work for several months, leaving the couple in financial difficulty.
DeWitt said, “We were planning to buy a house, but now we have to put off the idea and have to buy a car first, and also have to pay for Food and living expenses.”
Another 10 percent of respondents said they couldn’t pay their rent last month; overall, about 25 percent couldn’t pay at least one bill from the previous month.
The AP-NORC survey polled a sample of 1,434 adults in the United States from March 25 to March 1, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
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