COVID-19 Monitor

Last Updated:October 15, 2020

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The pandemic is hitting city budgets harder than the Great Recession (Axios) Published on: August 13, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact

With tax revenue in free-fall and expenditures dramatically rising, the coronavirus pandemic is on pace to hit cities’ finances even harder than the Great Recession.
Almost all cities are required to balance their budgets, and at this rate they’ll have no choice but to cut more services, layoff or furlough more workers and freeze capital projects.
Cities, on average, expect a 13% decline in general fund revenues in the 2020 and 2021 fiscal years.

The COVID-19 public health and economic crises leave vulnerable populations exposed (Brookings) Published on: August 13, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact, Global Response

We find that unemployed and essential workers are the most vulnerable given their lower income, lack of health insurance, and differences across household structure.
This timely evidence suggests a need for a more robust safety net, such as an expanded unemployment benefits program and more-accessible public health insurance during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as more-deliberate targeting of federal support to Black and Hispanic households.
We find that, among those who are unemployed and received unemployment benefits, the average delay between application and first benefits payout is 23 days. However, when evaluated across race/ethnicity, figure 2 shows that unemployed Black Americans waited seven to eight days longer than unemployed white and Hispanic Americans to receive benefits.

Capturing the pandemic for posterity (The Economist) Published on: August 13, 2020 | Category: Leadership

Photographers shooting patients and carers have wrestled anew with thorny ethical questions.
Photography, the critic Susan Sontag wrote, “has kept company with death ever since cameras were invented.” This year it has helped tell the story of covid-19.
What, for the West, has been an unusually intimate encounter with death has affected views on how suffering elsewhere in the world is portrayed.

Postponed College Football Games Could Disrupt $1 Billion in TV Ads (NY Times) Published on: August 12, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact

The postponement of much of the college football season could disrupt the flow of more than $1 billion from advertisers to the television networks that count on a slate of game broadcasts every fall.
Many players and school administrators, and even President Trump, had lobbied against the postponement, which could have financial ramifications for teams, campuses and local communities.
For Fox last year, college football was responsible for nearly 6 per cent of ad spending and nearly 10 per cent of all TV ad impressions, or viewer exposure to ads, according to the ad measurement company iSpot.TV.

Coronavirus makes for a brutal quarter for smaller US companies (FT) Published on: August 12, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact

Small and medium-sized US companies suffered a complete wipeout in profits in the second quarter because of the Covid-19 crisis, in sharp contrast to large multinationals that emerged from the most intense phase of the pandemic in better shape.
As the earnings season draws to a close, companies within the Russell 2000 stock index — the small-cap benchmark — have reported an aggregate loss of $1.1bn, compared to profits of almost $18bn a year earlier, according to data provider FactSet.
While bigger groups were able to quickly raise needed cash starting in mid-March, smaller companies struggled to tide themselves over. Many turned to government programmes. However, with stimulus measures now lapsing, many small companies once again find themselves in need of capital.

Covid-19: UK economy plunges into deepest recession since records began (Guardian) Published on: August 12, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of economic prosperity, fell in the second quarter by 20.4% compared with the previous three months – the biggest quarterly decline since comparable records began in 1955.
Warning that the government was making a historic mistake by winding down the furlough wage subsidy scheme as the country falls into recession, Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, said the downturn was a tragedy for the British people that had happened on Boris Johnson’s watch.
Britain’s decline was more than double the 10.6% fall in the US over the same period and also surpassed declines in France, Germany and Italy among G7 nations that have reported second-quarter figures so far.
Canada and Japan have yet to publish second-quarter data but are not expected to record greater falls than Britain.

The shifting nexus of retail banking (strategy+business) Published on: August 12, 2020 | Category: Global Response

For the first time in centuries, we’re starting to see customers making choices based on transaction execution. And instead of simply choosing a transaction method from the options provided with their particular account, they are adapting where they store their money — or how and from whom they borrow — to suit their preferred way of paying for goods and services.
Even as they struggle to deal with the impact of COVID-19, now is the critical time for banks across North America, Europe, and Australasia to chart their future and figure out how they will compete.
Similarly, buy-now-pay-later businesses such as Affirm in North America, Klarna in Europe, and Afterpay in Australasia have quickly grabbed a significant — and growing — share of the consumer lending market by offering a form of lending, integrated into the online checkout process, that is tailored to the way consumers prefer to transact rather than being predicated on an account-based relationship.
And as the pandemic restrictions drive a dramatic upswing in online transactions (while discouraging the use of both cash and card-based payments), the gradual trickle of consumers toward payment methods controlled by big tech platforms has turned into a torrent.

Half of Canadians say 2020 has been the worst year of their lives, with younger people more pessimistic: poll (National Post) Published on: August 12, 2020 | Category: Canadian Business, Global Response

So, it is not surprising that half — 50 per cent — of Canadians claim 2020 has been the worst year of their lives, according to a new poll conducted by Leger Marketing in partnership with the Association for Canadian Studies.
The poll also found more Americans — 58 per cent — than Canadians said 2020 has been the worst year of their lives.
Canadians and Americans said death of a loved one — 41 per cent and 46 per cent, respectively — and personal problems such as stress, anxiety and uncertainty about the future — 41 per cent for both Canadians and Americans — were the main reasons 2020 has been the worst year of their lives.

Small Businesses Are Dying by the Thousands — And No One Is Tracking the Carnage (Bloomberg) Published on: August 11, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact

By some accounts, small businesses are disappearing by the thousands amid the Covid-19 pandemic, and the drag on the economy from these failures could be huge.
Yelp Inc., the online reviewer, has data showing more than 80,000 permanently shuttered from March 1 to July 25. About 60,000 were local businesses, or firms with fewer than five locations.
Firms with fewer than 500 employees account for about 44% of U.S. economic activity, according to a U.S. Small Business Administration report, and they employ almost half of all American workers.

Coffee shops, food courts and lunch spots expected to lose billions as more of us work from home (Toronto Star) Published on: August 11, 2020 | Category: Canadian Business

The increase in Canadians working from home could have a huge financial impact on the food service industry, to the tune of billions of dollars lost by 2021.
Almost a quarter of the respondents, or 23.6 per cent, said they plan to work from home more often a year from now, while another 40 per cent either said they didn’t know, or they don’t know what they will be doing a year from now.
Before the pandemic, 36.8 per cent of the survey’s respondents were going to a restaurant for a meal or a break at least twice a week.
Close to 22 per cent of respondents said their employers are planning to allow people to work from home more often, and of those respondents, more than half intend to work from home permanently, with some considering relocating because of it.

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