Nearly one in three workers who had returned to their jobs after being laid off due to the coronavirus have lost their jobs again, according to a new survey released Tuesday by researchers at Cornell University.
The survey, conducted from July 23 to August 1, found that 31% of workers who had stopped working at some point during the Covid-19 shutdown and been rehired reported that they had been laid off again. Another 26% had been told that they were in danger of being laid off again.
The investigators said the results indicate that another round of layoffs is taking place. “Official and private sectors jobs data have not yet picked up the significant share of American workers that have already been re-laid off,” said Danielle Goldfarb of RIWI, the research firm that conducted the survey.
The job losses may be driven by the exhaustion of federal aid – including funds from the Paycheck Protection Program, which provides forgivable loans to help small businesses keep employees on payroll – rather than the resurgence of the virus, the researchers said, since there was little difference in the results between states that had controlled the virus and those that had not.
