By Jenna Notaro C.O. 2021
The rapid spread of COVID-19 across the United States has caused many businesses to shut down, due to social distancing or stay at home orders. As a result, many people are out of jobs and are struggling to maintain wellbeing during these times. On the other hand, there are also many people who are more financially secure that are enjoying the social isolation, seeing it as a time to relax. Through these major contrasts, COVID-19 has further deepened the socioeconomic divide amongst Americans. One group that has been impacted economically more than most are those who work in salons and barbershops.
The rapid spread of COVID-19 across the United States has caused many businesses to
shut down, due to social distancing or stay at home orders. As a result, many people are out of jobs and are struggling to maintain wellbeing during these times. On the other hand, there are also many people who are more financially secure that are enjoying the social isolation, seeing it as a time to relax. Through these major contrasts, COVID-19 has further deepened the socioeconomic divide amongst Americans. To further examine how people have been personally affected, I sent out a brief survey to fellow Maryland residents asking them how the virus has economically impacted them.
In the United States, even before the spread of the virus, there was an attitude amongst
many that everyone needed to work for their living and it was possible to support yourself if you just had the right work ethic, or commonly referred to as the “bootstrap ideology”. After the spread of the virus and many jobs lost, that attitude lingers. Instead of covering people’s original pay throughout stay at home and social isolation orders, “America is relying on beefed-up unemployment benefits to shield laid-off workers from economic hardship” (Saez and Zucman 2020). People are not getting the pay they need to sustain themselves, let alone others. The U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics reported that “Total nonfarm payroll employment fell by 701,000 in March, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent” (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020). Moreover, “White House economist Kevin Hassett predicts an unemployment rate of as much as 20% in April” (Tappe 2020). With unemployment rates slowly increasing to contain the spread of the virus, more and more people are struggling.
Many non-essential workers, like cosmetologists and barbers, are getting the worst end of
the layoffs. From my survey, one female cosmetologist from Maryland reported that her “job shut down March 20th and my company also didn’t pay us for the last week of work. I get asked almost daily about going to clients' houses to do their hair and they just don’t understand that I can lose my license over it. It’s been very stressful!” A way to support herself in this time could be to go to clients’ houses and get paid under the table, which may seem like the only viable option. In Maryland, “complaints may involve unethical conduct, incompetence, unlicensed practice, misrepresentation, or a number of other practice allegations” (Maryland Department of Labor, 2020). Breaking the stay at home order in Maryland and going against orders to have salons closed currently can be considered unlicensed practice. This puts the cosmetologists and clients at risk, as well as other people they may come into contact with. However, for many barbershop and salon owners, there is no other way to make money and be able to support themselves. In an interview with CNN, Dennis Mitchell, owner of Denny Moe's Superstar Barbershop in Harlem, New York stated that, “‘These barbers, they're risking their lives, but they're doing fine...You going to die from infection or you going to die from starvation?’” (Alcorn 2020). To many barbershops and salons, both choices are bad, but starvation seems more pressing. For these barbers, evading the virus seems possible until it isn’t.
In stark contrast to barbershop and salon owners that are struggling immensely, some
Americans are actually enjoying the social isolation and stay at home orders. To workers who are getting paid their regular salary to stay at home, this is a chance to relax, a chance to spend more time with their children and family. A software engineer from Maryland stated in my survey that “many aspects of this have actually been positive for me. I have benefited financially and have gotten to spend more time with my family.” For this engineer, he has been able to maintain their salary through the CARE act, which was passed by Congress to provide economic aid to Americans. The specific person who answered my survey is neither working from home, nor working at his job site, but is still being paid his normal salary to stay home. Others, though, have found the stress of working from home with all the distractions present. A financial aid administrator wrote that, “Some of the people who work for me are now working from home under less than ideal circumstances and have small children. This is preventing them from getting their work done and I have been covering their jobs/ tasks as well.” It is easy to understand that many people are anxious to get away from the distractions at home. Even as a student, finding a place to take an exam or work on a project has been difficult.
There is no one right way to get through this pandemic. This is just a new strain of a
virus, but the social impact is immense. People are surviving this in different ways because people have different resources and privilege. For myself, it has been very stressful at times and easy to ignore at others. It was important for me to realize that it is a privilege that I could be bored. At-risk groups like barbershops and salon owners do not have the same luxury to be bored in social isolation. These people are worried how they are going to pay for their next meal or how they are going to keep their businesses from shutting down. It is a privilege that I get to sit inside and video call with my friends and family, do my online workouts, and cook my dinners carefree. Not that my or anyone’s anxiety is not real, but we have to recognize what is good and what is under our control. We also have to realize there are Americans that are in much more danger than most due to their jobs either being lost or being forced to work and risk contracting the virus. Many people want haircuts, but we do not need them. Cosmetologists and barbers need to stay healthy. The best that those of us who can stay home can do is to stay home so that barbers and cosmetologists and everyone else can go back to normal, or as close to normal, as soon as possible.
(Saggese, 2020)
References
Saez, Emannual. “Jobs Aren’t Being Destroyed This Fast Elsewhere. Why Is That?” The New York Times, March 30, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/opinion/coronavirus-economy-saez-zucman.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR3wafuvKACHH-7e0JVkAfxirkJVQIj_ZoBdJWdcvK47HY14DskvX-XtZvc.
Alcorn, Chauncey. “Black Barbershop Owners Are Divided over Coronavirus Social Distancing.” CNN, April 28, 2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/28/business/black-barbers-coronavirus/index.html.
“Employment Situation Summary.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 3, 2020. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm.
Tappe, Anneken. “April Was Probably the Worst Month for American Jobs since the Great Depression.” CNN . May 6, 2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/06/economy/april-jobs-report-2020/index.html.
Saggese, Bruno Iyda. São Paulo, Brazil, n.d.
“Complaints - Cosmetologists.” Complaints - Maryland Board of Cosmetologists - Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing. Maryland Department of Labor . Accessed May 8, 2020. https://www.dllr.state.md.us/license/cos/coscomp.shtml.
Jenna Notaro is a junior at Wake Forest University, studying to receive a BA in psychology, with minors in biology and anthropology. Originally from Baltimore, MD, Jenna is currently located in Winston-Salem, NC for school.
