Could the impacts Covid-19 have lasting economic impacts? Yes...but how long depends on if we can identify the opportunities limit them.

While the Washington Business Journal wrote an article about bars and restaurants in the Metropolitan DC Area permanently closing during the pandemic, https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2020/10/06/dc-bar-restaurant-closures-from-covid-19.html, I read between the lines and saw another story that needs to be told. A story about the impacts of mass business closures, short term and permanent, and the impacts of those closings on the people who worked at and patronized these establishments. This is the story about the beginning of recession that could be America's next Great Recession or Depression.

The Coronavirus Pandemic and its current economic recession has fractured our public workforce systems and economies. Unemployment has double or tripled, many businesses have closed temporarily or permanently, businesses that are reopening are operating at limited capacities and not rehiring previous employees, and businesses that didn't close are slow to hire new employees due to bleak financial forecasting. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported that 24% of small businesses were temporarily closed and 43% of small business owners believed that they may permanently close their businesses before the close of 2020.

Outside of the business data, government and nonprofit resources are dwindling. The once robust Cares Act is gone. Local area Covid Relief Funding will be exhausted by December 31st. The Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) program that was controversial, but provided $600 to unemployed residents ended months ago. Several states have taken advantage of FEMA funding allocated by President Trump along with traditional National Dislocated Worker Grants. All of these resources are limited and definitely not everlasting. Additionally, tax revenue dependent governments will see lasting impacts and decreased revenues in the coming years. Oh...and we haven't mentioned the escalating housing and rent crisis, nor the fact that pandemic isn't going away this winter, and we can keep waiting on a vaccine.

So, what does this mean? If you read in between the lines, this means that the economic futures for businesses, local governments, and residents/job seekers are dreary...at best! Thousands of businesses will probably close, houses will be lost, credit scores with decrease while debt collections increase. Additionally, thousands of job seekers are excepting positions far below their education, experience, and previous pay ranges just to not be homeless and put food on the table. Once traditional mid-level employees begin accepting entry level positions a cascading effect begins. The outcome of this is that job seekers with multiple barriers to employment are left with little to no opportunities and they will ultimately be out of the workforce. Yes, throughout this article I have yet to discuss those who were already struggling prior to the pandemic.

Once those who have multiple barriers to employment, those who were already struggling, are left out of the workforce, the circle of poverty begins. The circle of poverty will drown those who were already barely floating. If you don't understand what I am saying...think of those with multiple barriers as Leonardo DiCaprio (Jack Dawson) in the Titanic, as he's floating in the Atlantic Ocean holding on a door, while Kate Winselt (Rose DeWitt Bukater) is everyone else in the world. Remember Jack drowned and Rose barely made it. This is exactly what we will begin to experience, returning citizens will begin to recidivate, those who were once moving away from public assistance will slowly become have to retreat to public assistance, bills of average households will go unpaid as their debts rise, foreclosures will soon follow, local and state government expenditures continuing to increase as they try to support their residents while their tax revenues decrease.

This post isn't meant for doom and gloom. It's meant to provide a clear vision of the pathway were headed toward if we don't begin to partner, communicate, and innovate. I commonly empower our team at Employ Prince George's with the saying, "Successful people can tell you of a time when they took advantage of an opportunity while failures can tell you of a time when something happened to them." I believe workforce development, economic development, and human services professionals can partner with local government officials and local elected leaders to identify the opportunity and create a pathway to the future. What is the pathway? I don't know, but I don know it is full of calculated risk and out of the box thinking. It will also include turning over every stone off opportunity we collect.

Opportunity will include breaking the invisible barriers created by old ideologies that said economic development and workforce development entities couldn't operate cohesively. Opportunity is seeing that decades of JTPA, WIA, and WIOA are only laws that are guidelines for states and local areas to follow while we create innovative programs that are developed from the decades of experience of front line One Stop/American Job Center staff. Opportunity is also American Job Center partners working together to leverage resource and authentically creating partnerships, not solely bound by MOU's and RSA's, but developed with the need of our residents and businesses. Opportunity is also removing "Job Development" from our vocabulary and replacing it with Business Services, and Business Services being a holistic approach to meeting the needs of business by coupling all of services available in local jurisdictions. Another opportunity is working with IT developers to create universal reporting systems for multiple government entities to share customers (job seekers and businesses) without dual data entry.

I know many of the readers are saying these aren't new opportunities and the list isn't exhaustive, and it's wasn't meant to be. The goal of identifying and naming those opportunities was to get the conversation started, to get your brains moving cohesively and in a direction forward. We are the change that is needed but we have to decide if we are going to be successful or failures. I have identified multiple opportunities and now it's your turn...