WASHINGTON - As the coronavirus worked its way across the United States, it cleaved the country's workforce in two: those who have the ability to work from home, and those who do not.
"People who are well-off and highly skilled and work from home are going to demand that their employers make accommodations for them," said Associate Professor Jesse Rothstein, a former chief economist at the US Labour Department who now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.
AN UNEQUAL RECESSION When the coronavirus arrived, the US economy had a tight labour market, with an unemployment rate near a historic low of 3.5 per cent in February, while long-stagnant wages were just starting to rise.The US Private Sector Job Quality Index - which uses government employment statistics to gauge the balance between non-supervisory jobs with decent pay and those without - has been charting downwards for years.
When the pandemic hit and sent the unemployment rate to 14.7 in April and the economy into an almost-certain recession, low-paid workers in industries like leisure, hospitality and food services were laid off in such large numbers their absence skewed average wages upwards. "Those are the very jobs that are under criticism over the last few years, given that they pay unreasonably low wages," Prof Weber said. And those type of jobs"come hand-in-hand with more precarious income situation".
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