Due to COVID-19 pandemic, the economies of several countries including Italy, the US, UK, India, France, and others have been severely impacted in 2020. However, the US economy is emerging from the pandemic with considerable speed, but are not transformed completely yet. The businesses and consumers are struggling to adapt new landscape with less workers, high prices, several inconveniences, and new innovations. The pandemic has halted and disrupted everything, damaging parts of the economy. However, the mass vaccination programme and steadiness and rise in number of cases in year 2021, have allowed many businesses and communities to reopen. According to the US Census Bureau, in June 2021, around 0.5 million new businesses opened in the US, which were in the local, home, professional, and auto sectors. Further, a record number of new businesses was created in 2020 also, owing to the restrictions imposed during the pandemic which accelerated the need and demand for businesses to adopt new technology, innovations, and changed interacting ways with customers.
According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, in February 2020, the unemployment rate was 3.5%, inflation was tame, wages were rising, and American companies were attempting to recover from a multiyear trade war. Although, the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell stated that the real unemployment rate has been closed nearly to 10% in May 2021. Across the nations, the job recovery rate is only about 60%, that is, around 4 million Americans are looking for a job for more than 6 months now. Between February 2020 and February 2021, the home states of the US countries such as North Dakota and Georgia suffered job losses of 6.5% and 4.6%, with GDP loss of 3.5% and 2.5% respectively. There is continuous concern related to that, how many of these changes are temporary and how many are true fundamental shifts, which will stick around for years and reshape the behaviour of the economy, among other things.
Additionally, in housing sector, the prices in markets are already up by 10% or more. The Co-Director of the University of Pennsylvania, Susan Wachter has predicted that “the nations are on the verge of rental housing crisis. By the end of June 2021, the national eviction moratorium expires and many landlords will raise rent and force tenants out who lost jobs during the crisis.” Furthermore, the single-family home rents were already up by 5.3% in April, as per the CoreLogic report in May 2021.
