Quoted: “These jobs aren’t the same jobs they were a year ago, and our lives aren’t the same lives that they were a year ago,” says Laura Dresser, associate director of COWS at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The research and policy center examines economic issues as they affect workers and employment.
Workers in the hospitality industry, already at the lower end of the wage scale, were especially hard hit.
“Those jobs make for very hard lives,” Dresser says. As the coronavirus spread, “either your venue shuts down and your work goes away, or if your work doesn’t go away, you’re exposed through your work.”