In the image above you can see that unemployment rates have skyrocketed since the COVID-19 outbreak in March. The unemployment rate reached an all time high in April at 14.%, but the total money spent on unemployment benefits was highest in May with $23.75 billion. Luckily, these numbers are slowly decreasing with time, but still have not reached numbers as low as they were in February before the mandated quarantine.
I spoke with a couple of essential workers who work in retail about how their work has changed due to the pandemic.
