Labor hoarding holds key to how severe a U.S. recession may get

By Michael Sasso and Reade Pickert
Published 6 Min Read

Bloomberg NewsRusty Berryhill, president of Kevin Charles Fine Upholstery, a furniture manufacturer, is trying to avoid layoffs.

A furniture-manufacturing hub around Elvis Presley’s hometown in Mississippi potentially offers an answer to one of the top questions facing the U.S. economy: Will employers hold on to workers as demand slows, or shed the staff they fought so desperately to hire during the pandemic?

If American businesses can resist laying off workers in the face of declining sales at the scale they did in past downturns, the country has a better chance of skirting a deep recession. 

Michael Sasso and Reade Pickert

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