CHAPEL HILL – As the coronavirus crisis continues to wreak havoc on the economy, layoffs in North Carolina could hit as many as 345,000 employees, predicts a UNC Kenan-Flager expert.
As with national estimates, those layoffs are largely expected in the hospitality and recreation industry, “impacting over 131,000 North Carolinians.”
“More layoffs will follow,” warned UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Professor Paige Ouimet, in a press briefing call via teleconference on Tuesday.
“We could see additional layoffs by small firms in North Carolina – 345,000 when aggregating across all industries.”
Ouimet spoke as part of a panel of experts from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and its affiliated Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. The group has been holding weekly briefings since the crisis erupted.
Ouimet’s projections roughly match unemployment claims.
On Tuesday, WRAL reported that more than 300,000 people have filed for unemployment since March 16.
The number is approaching twice what the state Division of Employment Security saw in all of 2019, when claims averaged about 3,200 a week.
NCSU economist Dr. Mike Walden recently raised his layoff estimate to 250,000 from a previous total of “five digits” as the extent of the coronavirus impact on the economy grew worse.
Human costs to layoffs
“What these results say is that we need to act now,” Ouimet said.
She stressed the “human costs” to layoffs. Among them: wage instability, housing displacement and disruption to schooling and social networks.
“Some of these costs are large,” she said, “so we need to do everything we can to support small businesses, and to keep as many of these workers employed as possible, particularly through this period of quarantine.
“So that as we come out of it, these workers are able to sort of continue to support the economy as a whole, and we can mitigate some of the larger costs of the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
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