The Price of a Virus Lockdown: Economic Free Fall in California – The New York Times

California was the first state to shut down to counter the coronavirus and has avoided the staggeringly high infection and death rates suffered in the Northeast. But the debilitating financial costs are mounting every day. California has an estimated unemployment rate above 20 percent, according to Mr. Newsom far higher than the 14.7 percent national rate and similar to the estimated rate for New York State, where the virus has hit the hardest.

In Los Angeles, with movie productions shut down, theme parks padlocked and hotels empty, things are even worse: The jobless rate has reached 24 percent, roughly equal to the peak unemployment of the Great Depression, in 1933.

Economic free fall, is how Tom Steyer, the former presidential candidate, described it. He is heading the state s economic recovery task force, a group of business leaders, labor activists, economists and former governors who have begun meeting to plot a way out.

via www.nytimes.com

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