U.S. Economic News
May 11, 2020
U.S. News
The Wall Street Journal reports that factory furloughs are becoming permanent layoffs as some manufacturers are forced to close plants for good, indicating that a growing share of recent pandemic-induced job losses won’t be temporary. Increased factory closures will further erode the U.S. industrial workforce, which has been falling as a share of overall employment for decades and never fully recovered from the financial crisis. WSJ
According to Bloomberg, even if the coronavirus is successfully contained in the coming weeks, the crisis will have long-lasting financial and psychological impacts on consumer behavior. Financial strain from income losses will limit consumers’ ability to spend when businesses reopen, and the fear of crowd-prone public spaces will be a difficult mentality to reverse. Bloomberg