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The United States is facing its worst unemployment crisis since the 1960s, as a consequence of the COVID19 pandemic. Today the country woke up with the resounding figure that more than 22 million people applied for unemployment insurance in the last month.
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The figure is national and is obtained from the reports delivered by each of the 50 States. Or rather, of 49 States, because Florida has not been able to obtain figures of how many people have lost their jobs in the last few weeks.
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Governor Ron DeSantis acknowledged that every morning he wanted to have concrete data but, one month after the scandal started due to the malfunction of the website that processes unemployment payment requestsThose figures have not yet arrived. Perhaps that is why it was announced that a new state department will be in charge of managing the figures.
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While the numbers do not arrive, unemployment is palpable in this State. Miami, the most iconic city in South Florida, has calculated that by the end of compulsory isolation, 25 to 30 percent of its small and medium businesses will have closed their doors. Besides, Flagship industries for this region of the country, such as cruise ships (main employers in the area), have had to decrease their fixed number of employees by an average of 30 percent.
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The coronavirus crisis affects everyone from the health to the economic point of view. It is not known how many depend on the insurance checks that the State sends in Florida (if some have already managed to receive those checks), but it is known that wherever you look, someone will be affected by this crisis.
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Diana Antillano is a single mother of two children from Venezuela who has been living in South Florida for 18 years. Until a month ago, she had two jobs, one in the morning as a saleswoman in a department store and the other in the afternoons as an assistant in a law office. Today he lost both jobs. The store is closed and as compensation, she and dozens of other employees have been given two checks of $ 150 each. Until further notice you will not have a job there. The lawyer I worked for in the afternoons is now operating remotely, but since Diana’s job was to attend to those who came to the office and put together the packages of papers that are sent by mail, in this remote modality she doesn’t have a assigned task and therefore does not have a salary.
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“I am a very positive person, so I didn’t even want to ask for unemployment insurance because I think that in a matter of a few weeks everything will be resolved. At the moment I have not paid the rent for my apartment, nor the car insurance, nor any of the services. Everyone understands that these are difficult times. And with food, I get help from the state that offers stamps that can be used in supermarkets. If the situation does not improve, I will have to ask for more help, ”Diana told Infobae. This week she also received $ 2,200 from the federal stimulus that will help her for a while.
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Similar is the case of Sandra Gil, a Colombian who has spent almost two decades in the United States living with her daughter and grandson. Sandra works as a property manager for a real estate company. On the rents of those properties they charge ten percent. Due to COVID19, a large part of the tenants did not pay the rent and that caused the owner of the real estate company to dismiss Sandra. “JI never saw anything like that, not even in the 2008 crisis“He assured. Sandra managed to apply for Florida unemployment insurance, which she has not yet received, after three weeks trying to navigate the page. “It was complicated but since I had time I kept insisting,” he said.
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Different is the case of Cristian Varas, an Argentine with more years here than in his country of origin. Cristian is a hairdresser and has his own beauty salon that opened this year. Technically nobody fired him and for working independently without belonging to a payroll of a company, he doesn’t even have the possibility of requesting state insurance. But the truth is that he had to close his business until further notice. “For more than a month now, I haven’t invoiced a single dollar, but I have expenses. Some believe that owning your own business should have an important backing pad, but as anywhere in the world when you just open a business, there are more expenses and debts than savings, ”he explained. “In my case, the only help I can apply for is a small business loan offered by the federal government. At very low interest, they are supposed to lend us up to ten thousand dollars to cover rent and employee expenses. But at the moment I have not received anything and things have come out of my pocket“Said this Bariloche.
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In previous crises, those most affected were often those who had recently migrated to the United States. Today the situation is equally difficult for the newest, as for those already established or even for those who were born here. Cities like Miami have established free food distribution systems and the distribution centers are full on a daily basis. While waiting for the official figures of the State, the personal cases put face and name to a tangible crisis.
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