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Mar 25, 2020
US Business News: Layoffs and food lines: How the pandemic slams the poorest U.S. workers
Laredo,
Texas (Reuters) - Alberto Mendoza figures he can make it a couple of
weeks on unemployment benefits before starting to decide which bills
won’t get paid. The 26-year-old father of three lost his job training
cooks when all the local restaurants started closing their doors and
laying off staff.
People
wait in line, following the social distance rules, to apply for a
relief box via teleconference call at the South Texas Food Bank in
Laredo, Texas, U.S., March 20, 2020. REUTERS/Veronica G. Cardenas Food
Bank
“I have to pay rent, my truck bills; I have three children to support,” he said.
Mendoza
is among thousands here in Laredo, Texas, along the southern U.S.
border, who are teetering on the edge of financial ruin as the
coronavirus pandemic takes hold – even though Laredo has seen no deaths
and confirmed just nine cases by Tuesday evening. That’s a tiny figure
compared to thousands of other hard-hit communities.
For an interactive graphic tracking coronavirus in the United States, click tmsnrt.rs/3bmK7N3
The
plight of Laredo – a city of 260,000 located in one of America’s
poorest counties – illustrates the breadth and depth of the economic
pain radiating across the world as governments scramble to shut down
commerce and issue stay-home directives to slow the pandemic. When city
officials limited public gatherings – even funerals – to no more than 10
people, the local economy went off a cliff, despite the comparatively
minor health impacts so far. The city’s rapid decline underscores the
magnified fallout from the pandemic in economically fragile communities
where most families live one or two missed paychecks away from
desperation.
Poverty makes it much harder for people to isolate
themselves to guard against infection or to seek proper care when they
get sick, said Sandra Quinn, a professor at the University of Maryland’s
School of Public Health.
“A pandemic like this just feeds on social inequities and existing health system disparities,” she said.
In
surrounding Webb County, which includes Laredo, nearly a third of
residents live beneath the federal poverty line, according to the U.S.
Census Bureau. About as many don’t have health insurance. Nearly all the
students in the city’s school system — now shuttered — were eligible
for subsidized lunches or other government benefits.
Mendoza’s
kids have insurance through Medicaid, the government-run health program
for low-income families. Mendoza has no insurance at all. If he gets
sick, he said, he would “go to the doctor and ask for a payment plan.”
Other
families are already in the food line. One day last week, more than 800
people showed up at the South Texas Regional Food Bank for boxes of
pasta, rice and other supplies. On a typical day before the pandemic,
just 25 or 30 people might have stopped by the organization’s warehouse
to get food to sustain their families through a rough patch.
Now,
instead of coming inside to ask for help, they sat at laptop computers
under an awning outside, no more than 10 at a time, using video chat to
talk with workers who didn’t want to run the risk of becoming infected.
“You have to feel for these people,” said Alma Boubel, the food bank’s director.
The
severity of the U.S. economic crisis will soon become more clear with
releases of new data. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James
Bullard recently predicted the U.S. unemployment rate may hit 30% in the
second quarter – higher than during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Goldman Sachs analysts estimated that more than 2 million people applied
for unemployment benefits last week alone, more than triple the
previous record.
The unemployment rate in Webb County, estimated
at 4.1% in January, was above the national average before the virus hit.
Many of the region’s jobs are tied to the transportation industry that
moves goods back and forth across the border with Mexico – traffic that
U.S. President Donald Trump and the Mexican government have sharply
curtailed in an effort to contain the disease.
Officials in
Laredo and Webb County did not respond to questions about how they
planned to handle the public health or economic shocks.
The
realities of lower-wage work also often mean that people can’t shift
their livelihoods to a home office, as professionals in higher-end jobs
often can. That dynamic also complicates government efforts to stop the
spread of disease through social isolation.
“Social distancing is
hard, and of course many low-income people work at jobs that are
physical, in-person, manual, and you have to show up,” said Sara
Rosenbaum, a professor at George Washington University’s Milken
Institute School of Public Health.
Studies after an outbreak of
the H1N1 flu virus in the United States a decade ago found that
minorities and lower-income families had a harder time separating
themselves from other people in the way health authorities recommend.
“They were less likely to be able to avoid public transportation, lived
in larger households,” and had jobs that couldn’t be done remotely,
Quinn said. Ricarda Rios, 65, worked as a substitute teacher in
Laredo before the schools closed. The system’s employees are still on
the payroll, but not the subs. He said he is already “completely out of
resources.”
That’s
made it harder to steer clear of other people, especially when stores
run short of basic supplies. “I have to go to different places until I
get lucky and buy a dozen of eggs or a gallon of milk,” he said.
Carmen
Garcia, the executive director of the Laredo Regional Food Bank, said
she grasped the enormity of the crisis when she exhausted the supplies
she bought for all of March just ten days into the month. Many of the
people who come to her for help live in large families and work low-wage
jobs that are now threatened. Many regularly seek cheaper medical care
on the opposite side of the border with Mexico, which has been closed to
non-essential travel.
“There’s a lot of worry now,” Garcia
said. “Our clients, what they’re saying is they don’t know where else
they can get assistance. They’re willing to risk their health. They
can’t work right now, so they don’t have a paycheck. They need whatever
food they can get.”
Reporting by Brad Heath and Veronica G. Cardenas; Additional reporting by Ned Parker; Editing by Brian Thevenot
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