COVID-19 is going to cause fundamental change in terms of our health and public behavior, but also in the very fundamentals of how people live and work. The $2 trillion federal stimulus package — the largest single economic intervention in world history — underscores exactly how critical it is for individuals and families to be able to maintain their livelihood during a time of uncertainty.
For most Americans employment is a paycheck-to-paycheck proposition. Even before the pandemic hit, a study by the American Payroll Association found that three-quarters of all Americans experience financial difficulty if their paychecks are delayed for even a week. In another study by The Center for Generational Kinetics for Instant Financial, researchers found that 38% of the hourly workers surveyed had lost sleep in the last year because their money ran short before payday. Forty-one percent of all hourly respondents have had to delay grocery purchases, and 25% have had to take a second job.
