Many Americans are now at risk of being evicted from their homes.
At least 44 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the past three months as the coronavirus pandemic devastated industries such as retail and hospitality.
Many who lost jobs were unable to pay their rent or utilities, prompting state and federal governments to issue a temporary ban on evictions.
But those bans are set to expire this summer, leaving many people at risk of losing their homes.
Bryan Fisher, 16, left, and Stephen Smith, 15, of Tenino, Wash., keep occupied by playing video games in a stall near their cattle at the Puyallup Fair in Puyallup, Wash., Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2003. The largest fair in Washington will continue through Sept. 21.
A small town in the state of Washington decided to print its own currency amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to The Hustle.
What’s going on?
Tenino, Washington, has decided to release its own currency during the coronavirus pandemic, which damaged the city completely.
The pandemic hurt local businesses. “Residents couldn’t afford groceries. Long lines snaked outside the local food bank. For more than a month, the downtown area looked almost abandoned,” The Hustle reports.
And then it happened: the town’s mayor, Wayne Fournier, encouraged the town to create its own currency. He put $10,000 aside to release to low-income residents.
Continue reading… “This small Washington town is printing its own currency. Here’s why”
From how we’ll decorate to where we’ll shop.
There is no crystal ball that will help us predict how surviving a pandemic will impact our lives a year or even six months from now. But one thing is certain—for the foreseeable future, we’re going to be spending time and living in our homes in a way that most of us never anticipated. That presents interesting challenges for the people who design, build, furnish, decorate, and help us buy and sell our houses. From bigger, ultra-functional kitchen pantries to FaceTime real-estate walk-throughs, some of our favorite experts weigh in on what comes next.
Continue reading… “4 pros predict the future of homes post-quarantine”
Distractions at home and difficulty communicating with colleagues during the pandemic contribute to output declines, according to Globant.
During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused companies to make the sudden and drastic shift to remote work, something had to give, and for US employees surveyed by Globant, that something was productivity.
Globant, a digital transformation company, surveyed 900 US senior-manager level and below employees in April and found that nearly half (49%) said they had decreased output, according to its report released this week.
Distractions from the home environment and difficulty communicating with colleagues were the top two contributors to decreased productivity, Globant found.
Continue reading… “Survey: 49% of remote workers report a drop in productivity”
Garth Brooks’ June 27 performance will air live at hundreds of drive-ins across the US.
(CNN)Garth Brooks might be headed to a drive-in concert near you.
The country singer announced on Thursday that he is going to perform at a drive-in theater on June 27. But here’s the best part for his fans: The concert will air live at 300 drive-ins across the country.
“They’re going to run it just like a regular concert, but this is going to be all over North America, one night only,” Brooks said on “Good Morning America.” “We are excited because this is a reason to get out of the house, but at the same time you get to follow all the Covid rules from every individual state and you get to have fun and stay within the guidelines of social distancing … we’re calling it ‘social distancing partying.'”
Continue reading… “Garth Brooks is hitting the road for a drive-in concert”
View of a serving robot at restaurant Dadawan on May 28, 2020 in Maastricht, Netherlands. Robots will serve food and drinks to the customers as well as to measure body temperature before customers enter the restaurant. Restaurants and cafes will re-open in The Netherlands on June 1st. as part of the Coronavirus lockdown ease.
Robots have been hired to greet customers, take their temperatures and serve them drinks at a restaurant in the Netherlands.
Dadawan, an Asian-fusion restaurant in Maastricht, reopened on 1 June as part of measures to ease lockdown restrictions in the Netherlands. And to help with social distancing, the restaurant has hired three robots named Amy, Aker and James. The humanoid robots have mechanical arms, torsos and LED-lit faces and take on some of the customer-facing tasks to reduce person-to-person contact.
Continue reading… “Robot waiters serve drinks and take temperatures at this Dutch restaurant”
Chief Economist on U.S. recovery and how we’re ‘standing at the bottom of the canyon’
She had been working as a concierge services coordinator at a nonprofit performing arts organization in New York City for four years before the closure of entertainment venues across the city destroyed demand for her skills.
“Job hunting is already incredibly tough without a global pandemic,” she told Yahoo Money.
The coronavirus pandemic and response have left millions of Americans like Laura without a job and caused employment income loss for nearly half of the households across the country, according to research from the Household Pulse Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Continue reading… “Coronavirus caused income loss for nearly half of American households”
Remote workers have a new found flexibility
Can you remember three months ago? In just 90 days, things have changed dramatically. Just 90 days. Yet, in that short amount of time, the way we think about where we live and how we live has completely changed.
In the latter part of those 90 days, I have heard from many people that the pandemic has forced their hand and has actually inspired investment in new technology or motivated a change in operations. These changes are adding up to huge impacts.
One of the big changes is the work-from-home policy. What started as a way to keep employees safe at home is now turning into the most popular work trend across the country, inspiring companies everywhere to step away from very large real estate construction projects and lease deals.
When office real estate is expensive and the country is facing an economic meltdown, and a work-from-home trend falls from the sky, it would be silly not to take it, right?
This Margins article reports that 40% of all venture capital funding in Silicon Valley actually goes to landlords instead of product development, and admits that even though it’s a big number, it is probably very conservative.
Continue reading… “How working from home is changing the way we think about where we live”
Flying with masks, for cabin crew and passengers, will become common practice.
Things might be better, or things might be worse, but if there’s one thing that is certain, travel will never be the same again.
Everything will change. It has to. Even if a vaccine is discovered for the novel coronavirus, the way in which we move around and see the world will be forever altered.
After an initial run of discounted fares, flying is likely to be more expensive post-COVID-19.
The big question is: how?
Continue reading… “Travel after coronavirus (COVID-19): Six ways it will change forever”
The work-from-anywhere revolution will accelerate the coming of a post-digital age for shopping, argues Doug Stephens of Retail Prophet.
Throughout history, cities have played a central role in the evolution of retail. From the grand bazaars of ancient times to the opulent department stores of the 1800s to the venture-backed start-ups of the 2000s, cities have offered the stage, the audience, and ultimately, the financial prosperity to power retail through the ages.
But in major developed economies like the United States, we are set to see an outbound migration from cities the likes of which we have not experienced since the 1950s. Just as the IBMs and Microsofts of the world did 40 years ago, migrating to the boundlessness of the suburbs, today’s corporate giants are rethinking location once again, except this time encouraging their employees to live and work wherever they like.
On May 21st, Facebook announced that it would give its employees not only the freedom to work from home permanently, but also to spin a globe and point to wherever they’d like “home” to be. Mark Zuckerberg told The Verge, “We’re going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale… I think we could get to about half of the company working remotely permanently.” That same day, Shopify and Twitter both made similar announcements. Shopify founder and CEO Tobias Lütke said he expects most of the company’s employees to choose the work from home option, adding: “The choice is really, are we passengers on this tidal wave of change? Or do we jump in the driver’s seat and try to figure out how to build a global world-class company by not getting together that often?”
Continue reading… “How an Exodus from cities will reshape retail”
Hotels, planes, and restaurants want your dollars back. Here are some of their plans to make it safe.
It’s something we look forward to all year: summer vacation. This time-honored tradition is an opportunity to get away from the stress of our daily lives and see new places, dip our toes in cool waters, or simply tune out the rest of the world for a few days. But this year, the continuing threat of Covid-19 has thrown that grand tradition for a loop, threatening to cancel it like a pool with bad pH levels.
And it’s not just wannabe-tourists who are suffering the loss of their vacations. As a result of Covid-19, 4 million people in the hospitality industry have lost their jobs. More than $21 billion in revenue has also been lost.
The question of “Is it safe to travel this summer?” is on the minds of many, and while there isn’t a clear answer yet, freaky googly-eyed robots are here to help us whenever we arrive.
Continue reading… “The most intimate areas of your vacation will be deep-cleaned by a freaky robot”
A worker paints over a Louis Vuitton storefront, boarded up after the coronavirus outbreak, on March 30 in San Francisco.
The wealthiest American households are keeping a tight grip on their purse strings even as their lower-income counterparts are spending a lot more freely when they emerge from weeks of lockdown. That decline in spending by the wealthy could limit the whole country’s economic recovery.
Researchers based at Harvard have been tracking spending patterns using credit card data. They found that people at the bottom of the income ladder are now spending nearly as much as they did before the coronavirus pandemic.
“When the stimulus checks went out, you see that spending by lower-income households went up a lot,” said Nathan Hendren, a Harvard economist and co-founder of the Opportunity Insights research team.
However, the wealthy are not matching them. “For higher-income individuals, that spending is still way far off from where it was prior to COVID and it has not recovered as much,” Hendren said.
That’s potentially crippling because consumer spending is a huge driver of economic activity. In fact, so much of the country’s economy depends on shopping by the top income bracket that the wealthiest 25% of Americans account for fully two-thirds of the total decline in spending since January.
Continue reading… “The rich have stopped spending and that has tanked the economy”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.