Rutgers analyst James Hughes says the cultural and economic landscape’s been forever altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. He notes New Jersey’s still short 600,000 jobs lost to the lockdown. As for all the jobseekers, his new report sketches a bleak economic recovery that’s completely restructured by the pandemic.
“It’s been essentially gasoline on the fire accelerant, in terms of change,” Hughes said. “And people that are caught in that restructuring are the ones that are really feeling the pain.”