Name: Bay Area braces for fallout as nation’s unemployment skyrockets to historic 14.7%
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Bay Area braces for fallout as nation’s unemployment skyrockets to historic 14.7%

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The national unemployment rate skyrocketed to 14.7% in April, according to government figures released Friday that track a labor market deeply scarred by the coronavirus pandemic.The rate soared from the previous 4.4%, itself a level that reflected a listing March economy. The one-month jump from March to April set a record since the government began tracking the figures in 1948, and the rate itself was higher than the modern economy has ever seen.The Labor Department said 20.5 million jobs were lost in April. Job losses were not only deep but broad, affecting a huge range of industries: retail, restaurants, manufacturing, construction, education, health services, local government, transportation, real estate.Stunning as it is, the economy is moving so fast that the 14.7% rate does not reflect the present situation, since it relies on data collected in mid-April. Millions more people have been laid off since then. Over the past seven weeks, filed for unemployment insurance.Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday that California’s unemployment rate is likely now above 20%. That would dwarf previous contractions since World War II, said Michael Bernick, the former head of California’s Employment Development Department and now a lawyer at Duane Morris in San Francisco.The supercharged unemployment numbers are the result of a downturn that rivals the economic effects of Hurricane Katrina for speed, the Great Depression for size, and the post-Pearl Harbor restructuring of the economy to a war footing, according to Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom.This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate“It’s as if some crazy economic mad scientist fused the three into some great monster and unleashed them on the U.S. economy,” Bloom said.For the Bay Area, the new reality of high unemployment will be sobering. shows at least 92,000 jobs lost temporarily or permanently here.With its heavy dependence on tourism and international trade, the region takes a double whammy, said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy.“Hotels, convention centers, restaurants are really decimated,” he said. “And we are tied to the Pacific Rim so the limitations (on immigration and trade) are really hurtful. We will take a relatively hard hit.”That’s already obvious in the massive wave of unemployed Bay Area workers from the hospitality industry, most of them low-wage.The Bureau of Labor Statistics report showed that employment in the leisure and hospitality sector fell by nearly half, from 16.4 million in March to 8.7 million in April. Almost three-quarters of the decrease (5.5 million jobs) were in eating and drinking establishments.“The people in the service industry at the bottom of the income distribution are hurt the most from unemployment,” said Kim Rueben, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. “In the Bay Area, that becomes that much harder because the cost of living is so high.”Many eked out a living here by relying on second or third jobs, such as driving for Uber or Lyft, but now those earning opportunities have dried up, she said.Not only are lower-wage workers financially vulnerable, but many are vulnerable to infection as well, since their jobs require in-person interactions, and many are forced to scrape together whatever work they can, such as delivering food or working in grocery stores or warehouses, she said.That was borne out in a UCSF study this week of Mission District residents that showed among low-wage workers who were still reporting in person to jobs in food or construction, for instance.At the same time, California will have less ability to provide a safety net for those precariously situated people, with state revenue plunging, she said. On Thursday, officials said that state isRecent layoffs at Bay Area tech companies like Uber, Airbnb and Lyft, among many others, have shown that no industry is immune to the calamity wrought by the coronavirus.Still, despite the damage, the Bay Area is likely the best situated economy in the nation to absorb the body blows because so many employees can work from home and are in skilled fields like tech, Stanford’s Bloom said.Coronavirus Coverage“Tech is the best industry to try and find a job in,” Bloom said. “That may generate some net migration here.”He pointed to a recent by University of Chicago economists showing that the South Bay had the highest proportion of jobs than can be done from home. The San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metro area was not far behind.That trend may already be bearing out for Salesforce, the software company which brought 9,000 workers to its high-rise campus in downtown San Francisco before ordering them to work from home. Already the city’s largest private employer, it has received tens of thousands of applications in the last few weeks and made over 1,000 new hires.“In this new environment, we’ve been fortunate to see an increased amount of incredible talent who want to work at Salesforce. We are continuing to hire,” a spokeswoman said.Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutesBut nationwide, the outlook for a recovery is grimmer.Bloom said around 40% of U.S. jobs lost during the pandemic could be gone for good, and that number could worsen as the closures drag on.“The evidence (implies that) once you’ve been unemployed for two to three months, temporary layoffs and furloughs will translate into permanent job loss,” Bloom said.One of the millions of non-tech workers still on the unemployment rolls and wondering if they will still have a job is Katira Arak.Arak previously managed events for the Mission District’s Lolo restaurant, along with serving and hosting, before she was furloughed in mid-March.Arak said she has been receiving unemployment benefits since late March but lives with the uncertainty of when or if her job will return.“They furloughed everyone with the guarantee that we will have a job back as long as business goes back to normal,” Arak said. Lolo initially closed down for a few weeks after the furloughs and is now open for takeout and delivery with a skeleton staff, but large events seem far off.“We have no idea at what point in time they’ll say it’s OK to have 30 people sit down for dinner,” Arak said.The state is expected to issue restaurant reopening guidelines Tuesday that are likely to include precautions like social distancing that will cut down on seating capacity. Fewer seats means less revenue, and fewer jobs when the restaurants do reopen.That will affect workers like Arak who make their living off large groups and turning over tables.“I don’t think we can go back at the same capacity. ... The tables will have to be spread out further,” she said. “I don’t know what events will look like.”San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Roland Li contributed to this report.Carolyn Said and Chase DiFeliciantonio are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers Email: , Twitter: ,Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

The national unemployment rate skyrocketed to 14.7% in April, according to government figures released Friday that track a labor market deeply scarred by the coronavirus pandemic.The rate soared from the previous 4.4%, itself a level that reflected a listing March economy. The one-month jump from March to April set a record since the government began tracking the figures in 1948, and the rate itself was higher than the modern economy has ever seen.The Labor Department said 20.5 million jobs were lost in April. Job losses were not only deep but broad, affecting a huge range of industries:...

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Chase DiFeliciantonio

Carolyn Said

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Bay Area braces for fallout as nation’s unemployment skyrockets to historic 14.7%

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