Theodor de Bry’s 1590 engraving of Secoton, from John White’s watercolors. Public domain.
In March 2020 the pandemic shut businesses, and jobs disappeared faster than any modern report had recorded.
If money is tight, the shift ends when the dining room, the site, or the shop is ordered closed.
If you are in the middle, a mortgage does not pause because the customers did.
If you have savings, the market can crash and rebound while the layoff is still the fact at home.
In March 2020 states and cities closed large parts of ordinary life to slow the coronavirus.
Air travel, restaurants, schools, and job sites stopped at once.
The unemployment filings that followed were outside anything the postwar monthly numbers had shown.
Source: Public record of US shutdowns beginning March 2020.