Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, October six. I'm Oscar Romeiras from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America.
Speaker 1: The economic recovery of the US has been uneven, as
Speaker 1: some workers and companies are showing signs of coming out fine,
Speaker 1: while others face an uncertain path. The pandemic has been
Speaker 1: kind to those that can work from home and the
Speaker 1: businesses that cater to them, but lower wage workers and
Speaker 1: those typed to tourism and public gatherings have suffered. Tao
Speaker 1: Francis business reporter at the Wall Street Journal who joins
Speaker 1: us for the K shaped recovery. Thanks for joining us, Teo,
Speaker 1: good to be here. I wanted to talk about the
Speaker 1: economic recovery of the country right now as we continue
Speaker 1: to go through the pandemic. A lot of people were
Speaker 1: hoping for some type of V shaped recovery, you shaped recovery.
Speaker 1: That's when you know it obviously drops down very sharply
Speaker 1: but recovers very quickly, or in the case of a U,
Speaker 1: it kind of takes a little longer to come back,
Speaker 1: but it comes back still nonetheless. But what we're seeing
Speaker 1: out there is a little bit more of a K
Speaker 1: shaped recovery, so really a kind of a divide between people.
Speaker 1: People on an upper arm are recovering much more quickly
Speaker 1: and and getting back to normal levels of people on
Speaker 1: the lower arm are not so. TEO, tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about how the country is recovering so far economically.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at the overall numbers, were
Speaker 1: clearly coming back from a deep round of economic crisis.
Speaker 1: But for some people that recovery is almost done. You
Speaker 1: have essentially white collar workers, people who can do their
Speaker 1: jobs from home. You have companies that either employee white
Speaker 1: collar workers primarily or provide services that can be done
Speaker 1: at the distance. You have highly educated people for them.
Speaker 1: This recovery is well on its way, and in fact,
Speaker 1: at some companies really there's been kind of a boom
Speaker 1: and demand for things like cloud services or grocery stores.
Speaker 1: There's been a rise in shopping for necessities. For companies
Speaker 1: like Amazon, things are actually better than they work. Home
Speaker 1: depot catering to people who are sort of adding onto
Speaker 1: their house or improving their house and yard. But the
Speaker 1: other half, the or the other part of the population
Speaker 1: is on that lower arm of the k. These are
Speaker 1: people whose jobs depend on face to face contact and
Speaker 1: yet don't benefit from this demand for you know, home
Speaker 1: building supplies and that kind of thing. These are people
Speaker 1: who are in many cases on the lower end of
Speaker 1: the educational spectrum, people who are in the lower end
Speaker 1: of the wage spectrum, and then places that are really
Speaker 1: heavily dependent on tourism and travel, which of course our
Speaker 1: industries that have been really hard hit. So let's break
Speaker 1: it down a little bit as far as how it
Speaker 1: goes for workers. It really does seem to be that
Speaker 1: people and the industries and all that they were able
Speaker 1: to send their employees home to work from home really
Speaker 1: are doing the best. And then the businesses that are
Speaker 1: catering to them. So you know, you talk about like
Speaker 1: Amazon doing really great because people are just ordering stuff
Speaker 1: from home, they're sending things there, So those industries have
Speaker 1: also been doing good. So this kind of work from
Speaker 1: home thing really seems to be a major turning point
Speaker 1: in how well people are doing if you think about it.
Speaker 1: The economic crisis was brought about because of the shutdowns
Speaker 1: that were done in response to a virus, right, and
Speaker 1: a virus transmits you know, it's contagious among people when
Speaker 1: they're in relatively close proximity to each other. So the
Speaker 1: shutdowns were aimed to stop that. And so what did
Speaker 1: you do? You you really send people home and if
Speaker 1: you could keep working, like I can keep working, I
Speaker 1: can do my job from home, a lot of white
Speaker 1: collar workers can and they did, and their companies adapted,
Speaker 1: and that took little effort and probably a little bit
Speaker 1: of expense, like more zoom meetings and and maybe some
Speaker 1: people got allowances for a desk chair or something at
Speaker 1: home and that actually prompted some spending. But a lot
Speaker 1: of people can't do that. There are some jobs that
Speaker 1: it's just very difficult to do at home. Some of
Speaker 1: those have been coming back, as you know, the auto
Speaker 1: garageestive reopen and that sort of thing in places where
Speaker 1: maybe people aren't face to face with their customers or
Speaker 1: one another quite so much, or you can adapt the
Speaker 1: business model to that, but their businesses where that's not
Speaker 1: the case. Think about a movie theater, think about live sports,
Speaker 1: think about theaters and concert venues. I mean, these are
Speaker 1: all places where people go to be together to see
Speaker 1: something live and in person, and that's really hard to
Speaker 1: fix in a pandemic. And those people that work on
Speaker 1: those industries, you know, a lot of them saw furloughs
Speaker 1: for the first few months. A lot of those furloms
Speaker 1: are becoming permanent. Now you mentioned movie theaters. Regal Cinemas
Speaker 1: is closing, basically suspending all operations in the United States.
Speaker 1: Disney announced twenty eight thousand layoffs last week. You know,
Speaker 1: these furloughs are becoming permanent, and so they're really feeling
Speaker 1: the pain of it, and that's just kind of prolonging
Speaker 1: how long their return will be. In a real sense,
Speaker 1: what you're seeing is the cautious optimism of the first
Speaker 1: part of the pandemic really turn into pessimism for a
Speaker 1: lot of people. And one thing they ask is is
Speaker 1: they ask people whether they think they are layoffs or
Speaker 1: temporary or permanent. And just as the summer has worn
Speaker 1: on and now we're in the fall, you really saw
Speaker 1: a fewer and fewer people saying that they thought there layoffs,
Speaker 1: we're just going to be temporary. In other words, there's
Speaker 1: this realization that at least for certain segments of the
Speaker 1: economy and places in the country, this is not going
Speaker 1: to be a temporary thing. This is going to drag on.
Speaker 1: The economic return is kind of uneven all over the place.
Speaker 1: You know, I suggest everybody go and read the article
Speaker 1: because you laid out really well. But you know, there's
Speaker 1: the workers, there's the industries, and there's the regions. Also,
Speaker 1: you mentioned tourism. All these states and cities that dealt
Speaker 1: heavily with tourism, they're seeing an uneven return. Hawaii because
Speaker 1: their travel restrictions in place, has seen a big downturn.
Speaker 1: Las Vegas the same way, Los Angeles, New York. All
Speaker 1: these big hubs where people would go all the time,
Speaker 1: you know they're not going or it's harder for them
Speaker 1: to return as well, and their workers as well. You
Speaker 1: look at two places right next to each other, like
Speaker 1: Nevada and Utah states are literally next story to each other.
Speaker 1: Nevada has been hit very hard and Utah is among
Speaker 1: the less hard hit states, and a big part of
Speaker 1: that is this dependence on face to face in this case,
Speaker 1: tourism related activity. Yeah, I mean it's tough, and the recovery,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, is is kind of uneven all over
Speaker 1: the place. But hopefully things start getting back into motion
Speaker 1: and we can see some of these gains back in
Speaker 1: these places that really needed. Tao Francis, Business reporter at
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal. Thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm Austar Ramirez and this has been reopening America.
Speaker 1: Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can
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