EVANSVILLE — Nina Sowders was terrified about how she'd make her rent or afford her groceries when she was laid off from her waitressing job on March 15, 2020, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than a year later, the 22-year-old has those same fears.
With the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, there’s a lot of talk of the economy recovering, but Sowders says she’s not that optimistic. For many low-wage earners, the pandemic just pushed them more into poverty, she said.
“This has left a mark on so many people, and it’s going to last a long time,” Sowders said.
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Her worry is as everyone else moves on and recovers finically, low-wage earners are going to be left behind.
“I feel like we’re always left on the backburner anyway. I’m afraid that will be the case here,” she said.
Sowders' fears aren’t unfounded as many experts forecast that across the country, millions of low-wage jobs won’t return.
While she has worries for the future, her focus now is making it through what continues to be a challenging time.
Waitressing in a pandemic
After Sowders was laid off last March, she didn’t start receiving unemployment for a month. She relied on family and friends to get through that time, saying without their help, she doesn’t know where she’d be today.
Sowders returned to work in May fearful she was putting herself in danger of contracting COVID-19 but knew she didn't have another choice. One of the worst parts, she said, was dealing with customers who refused to wear a mask and were at times combative.
“They yell and fuss if you ask them to wear a mask, so sometimes you feel you’re better off not saying anything,” Sowders said.
She had initially thought customers would be nicer knowing the struggles those in the hospitality industry were experiencing. But she found the opposite to be true once she returned. People weren’t willing to accept that because of staffing shortages and other problems caused by COVID-19, wait times would be longer.
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She continued to put herself in danger of getting COVID-19 and dealing with aggressive customers all while making less money.
Business was so slow once she returned to work that everyone’s shifts at her job were cut back. She went from working 35 to 40 hours a week pre-pandemic to just 10 to 20 hours when she came back.
Sowders said she’s lucky to have help from family to get through this time but knows many others don’t have that same privilege. She knows people who’ve had to move into less-than-ideal living situations, people doing things they normally wouldn’t to make money and others feeling trapped by their financial situation.
That stress is taking lives, Sowders said.
“With losing our jobs and having to stay inside, I’m noticing a lot of people are relapsing, and there’s been a lot of death also just from not only COVID but raising addiction rates and opioid use,” she said. "We've lost a lot of friends in our community."
Low-wage earners impacted the most
Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, said it’s true not everyone was impacted equally financially from the pandemic.
"Near the end of 2020, the starkest contrast was the effect at different types of income and education levels," Hicks said.
Those making more than $60,000 a year saw job growth of about one and a half percent over the year. Hicks said the group has been seeing substantial job growth for the past decade, so while this year was a setback, it wasn’t terrible economically.
Individuals earning $29,000 to about $60,000 a year saw job growth of about -4 percent. Hicks said for this group, it’s been the worst year since the great recession.
The most heavily impacted though were those who make under $29,000 a year.
“It was the worst single year for job losses of about 20 percent, worse than any other," Hicks said. "To put it in context, it took about three years of the great recession to cause the same share of job losses that the bottom third of American workers experienced (during the pandemic.)”
He said with the start of 2021, there have been many signs the economy is recovering, and the outlook is bright for higher wage earners. But that’s not the case for minimum wage workers.
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“Many of those jobs won’t return,” he said.
Hicks explained the main reason for the job loss in these fields is the technological integrations businesses made quickly over the past year.
“We go through constant technological advancements all the time. But normally, those kinds of technological changes happen slowly and don’t displace a lot of workers. Well, we just went through, 10, 15, 20 years of change in one year,” Hicks said.
Many offices switching to remote working will also impact those in the service industry, Hicks said. If people aren’t working downtown, there won’t need to be as many restaurants and service-based businesses.
“Adjustments that would have happened in 10 years happened in 10 months, and that’s where the permanent job losses are occurring,” he said.
Other experts foresee the same challenges and have been advocating for job training programs aimed at this specific group.
Looking to the future
Susan Lund, head of the McKinsey Global Institute, told the Washington Post: “We think that there is a very real scenario in which a lot of the large employment, low-wage jobs in retail and foodservice just go away in the coming years. It means that we’re going to need a lot more short-term training and credentialing programs.”
Sowders said she’d love to go back to school and enter another career field. She was trying to do just that before the pandemic. While there were challenges before, at this point, Sowders said it seems impossible now.
“When you’re just stuck on survival for now, how can you plan for the future?” she said.
College or any kind of job training doesn’t seem within reach, she said, for many in her situation.
This whole year, Sowders said, everyone talked about being nice to essential employees and service workers. She thinks it was just a big show because there hasn't been help from the government on the scale needed for how much low-wage earners were impacted.
She knows people are advocating for more financial support and career training programs for low-wage employees but isn't optimistic they'll get the help they need.
"This year was a big setback, and people need help. But we never get it," Sowders said. "But the only way we'll get through this is if we support each other."