It is one year since the coronavirus crisis forced the economy to its knees, and some people may never recover financially.
Despite recent signs of improvement – including modest labor gains and progress with Covid-19 vaccine shots, paving the way for a more open economy – half of working adults in the US said the impact of the pandemic made it more difficult for them will make long-term financials, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.
Among those who said their financial situation was getting worse, 44% said it would take three years or more to get back to where they were 12 months ago – and 1 in 10 said their finances would never be quite the same be not.
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“There are certain groups that have not only experienced job losses in their household, but also have to incur debt – these are things that have consequences for their future,” said Juliana Horowitz, one of the authors of the report.
Inequality was a feature of the recovery of the pandemic, characterized by job losses for those at the bottom and rising wealth for those at the top.
This so-called K-shaped recovery divided the country nearly in half, with the richest Americans doing even better than before, while millions of others faced setbacks.
Pew said that lower-income adults, as well as Black and Hispanic Americans and younger than 30, were more likely to say that they or someone in their household had lost a job or suffered a pay cut since the coronavirus outbreak. .
As a result, they had to defer certain accounts and incur debt in the face of urgent financial problems, including food insecurity.
Meanwhile, higher-income adults are more likely to say that their family’s financial situation has improved over the past year, mainly due to less spending and more money.
“Higher-income adults are also more likely to do work that they can do from home, so they did not experience the same job losses,” Horowitz said.
About 4 out of ten wealthy Americans said their family’s financial situation had changed for the better, compared with 32% of middle-income people and only 22% of lower-income adults, Pew found.
An overwhelming majority of higher-income adults – about 86% – said their finances were in good or even excellent shape. The same goes for about 6 out of ten adults with at least a four-year college degree, white and Asian Americans, men, and those 65 and older.
Alternatively, about three-quarters of low-income adults, blacks and Hispanics, and those without college degrees, said their personal finances were in a fair or poor state.
The Pew Research Center interviewed more than 10,300 American adults in January.
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