Consider This from NPR - Congress Passes Relief Bill, But For Many Americans It Comes Too Late

Episode Date: December 22, 2020

After seven months since the last coronavirus relief bill, Congress finally passed a new one on Monday. Neither Democrats or Republicans are completely happy with the $900 billion package, but it does provide some relief. Included in the newest bill are extended unemployment benefits and $600 direct deposit payments to most Americans. But for many people who previously lost their jobs and livelihoods, this relief comes too late. NPR's Lauren Hodges reports on the millions of people who are have been in financial limbo since the COVID-19 pandemic hit.And the financial impacts of the pandemic have not been felt evenly. Women and communities of color are bearing the greatest burden. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly spoke with associate professor of economics Michelle Holder of John Jay college at City University of New York, about how industries like retail and hospitality have been disproportionately gutted and when they might return to pre-pandemic levels.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

It's been seven long months since the last stimulus bill. On Monday night, Congress finally passed a new one. If not in this vote, the ayes are 91, the nays are 7. The 60-vote threshold having been achieved, the motion to concur is agreed to. Getting to this point has been messy. Senate Republicans have been trying since July, July, to get more targeted bipartisan relief into the hands of the American people. The Republican leader's accusation that the blame for this bill's delay lies totally on one side is just ridiculous.

It's Alice in Wonderland thinking. It defies all the facts as to what we have seen. The Senate's top Democrat, Chuckumer and top Republican Mitch McConnell speaking there on Monday morning. Neither side got what they wanted. Still, this $900 billion package does provide relief in a number of ways. Unemployment benefits are extended. There's help for renters. We also have in the legislation direct payments, which were not in the Republican bill, to America's working families. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on the House floor Monday. Those direct payments will come to $600 for most Americans, half of what was paid out in the spring. I would like them

bigger, but they are significant and they will be going out soon. Consider this. The latest relief bill is meant to get us through March. But for many Americans, the damage is already done. Their jobs, their livelihoods, lost. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Tuesday, December 22nd. This message comes from NPR sponsor, AT&T. There's a lot that's different about this school year. But one thing that hasn't changed is AT&T's commitment to education.

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Early in the pandemic, the federal government stepped in with a menu of aid programs, including an extra $600 per week of unemployment benefits, benefits for self-employed people who'd lost work, and those one-time relief checks of up to $1,200 for individuals. But that money is long gone. I've lost the life I was very proud of having built. My business has dried up in the last few months. I don't have the money from the gigs we were playing.

Things are just bottom up. I've drained my savings. After a couple months, my landlords were as lenient as they could be. I'm making half of what I did last year. I've lost my car. I've lost my apartment. And it just wasn't enough at the end of the day. And they gave me an eviction notice. An overwhelming number of people are unemployed right now. More than 10 million. A moratorium on evictions is about to expire, just as temperatures dip below freezing in many parts of the country, which means many Americans are feeling helpless right in the middle of what has become the worst surge of the pandemic.

NPR's Lauren Hodges spoke with one woman who lost her financial footing this year, and then some. I really lost everything during this pandemic. That's Lily Rain from Asheville, North Carolina. She was a professional pet sitter and dog walker. And before the pandemic, things were great. For the first time in my life, I was running my own business. And I was not only running my own business, I was really good at it. She felt like she'd achieved financial security. It felt great. I was constantly employed. My credit score had gone up into the 700s. My whole life had been entirely where I

wanted it to be at that point. Then, once the pandemic hit, demand for pet sitting and walking evaporated. No one is going out of town. No one's traveling. No one's doing any of the things that even require me to do the smallest day-to-day parts of my business. Rain joins about 10 million Americans now out of work. And new data from the University of Chicago and the University of Notre Dame found that nearly 8 million people had slipped into poverty since this summer. The academics behind the data blame the jobless situation and a safety net with holes big

enough for many to fall through. For Rain, that safety net is basically living off of her credit cards. She says she has about four dollars left in her bank account and her mother is paying her phone bill for her. My credit score has now dropped by over a hundred points. It's really hard knowing that for the first time in my life, I had a credit score that I could have eventually finally bought a home with and stopped living in an apartment. And now my credit score is back damaged so heavily that it will not be repaired for a very long time to come. Rain hopes to rebuild once people start traveling again and need pet sitters. And she admits she hasn't lost everything. You know, I still have my health, be it as it is, you know.

And during a pandemic that's claimed more than 320,000 lives, that's something Rain knows she can't take for granted. NPR's Lauren Hodges. Of course, the financial impacts of the pandemic are not evenly felt. Women and communities of color are bearing the greatest burden, and industries like retail and hospitality have been disproportionately gutted. These do tend to be lower wage jobs, customer service oriented jobs. And because the customers weren't there, you know, these workers

really were not needed to the same degree that they were before the pandemic. Michelle Holder is an associate professor of economics at John Jay College, City University of New York. A lot of these jobs are working class, blue collar jobs. And the loss of these types of jobs really has been devastating, I'd say, for middle America. Devastating. And then there are the ripple effects. There are so many ramifications. And so, you know, for people who lose their jobs, they are at risk of losing their homes, food insecurity. There are plenty of families that have lost everything because

they're not able to pay for unexpected health care issues. So losing a job is the very beginning of a kind of domino effect, making that individual or that family much more vulnerable to just income loss. And is there any data, any numbers we can put on the ripple effects beyond just on an individual and the crisis that losing your job, your livelihood can represent? When you look at the effects on a family, on a neighborhood, on a community of somebody who was anchoring that and bringing in income, suddenly no longer being able to do so. Right. I live in Manhattan. I actually live in Harlem. And during the early part of the pandemic, the atmosphere in Harlem, which still has a sizable Black community, the atmosphere was really tense. What do you mean? People just seemed scared? They seemed scared and upset. Angry. Yeah. Yeah. There's research on the effect of job loss on people of color. And because

people of color in this country have fewer resources to fall back on than, you know, white families or white individuals, a job loss has a harsher impact than it does on white families and white communities. Not that job loss is not devastating for anyone, but because there are wealth gaps and income gaps between Blacks and whites in the U.S., suffering a job loss, there's a much more anxious implication for Black families and Black communities. If I'm hearing you right, Michelle Holder, you're talking about the loss of a job, which if it happens to any of us is devastating, that transcends race. But for communities of color that perhaps were already closer to the edge, that had less of a safety net, the impact is just more profound.

It is. It's more profound in a material sense and in a psychological sense. You know, this real kind of helpless fear of what's going to happen next and are we going to weather this storm? So bottom line, are you optimistic as you look ahead to 2021 and the job scene? Wow, that's a rough question to answer. I'll try to answer it, but I will qualify my answer by saying I'm either a pessimistic optimist or an optimistic pessimist. Meaning who the heck knows? Right, right. But mostly I'm a realist. I do believe that the recovery, as tepid as it is, will continue. But I don't think by next year we should expect all of the major indicators,

such as the unemployment rate and the poverty rate, to really get down to pre-pandemic levels. Michelle Holder, she's an associate professor of economics at John Jay College, City University of New York. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.