People ARE stocking up on the bare necessities ….
And businesses and people ARE adjusting….
No matter what?
Some people HAVE TO work….
The volume of food and paper products passing through a warehouse just outside Los Angeles is up 30 percent from the same time a year ago. Pizza deliveries are surging as people around the country hunker down.
Medical product manufacturers are racing to help hospitals around the country lacking critical equipment needed to diagnose and treat Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Millions of people lost jobs or saw their wages severely curtailed last week as many companies shut down or cut back on operations. But the pandemic has also created a spike in demand for critical products and services, causing some of America’s biggest employers to scramble to try to hire workers at a time when parts of the country are going into lockdown. Many are forgoing normal hiring procedures to add staff as quickly as possible.
On Thursday, Walmart, the nation’s largest employer, said it was looking to hire 150,000 additional employees in its stores and warehouses through the end of May. That represents a roughly 10 percent increase in its current work force.
To ramp up quickly, the retailer said it was speeding up the hiring process, which normally takes two weeks. The company’s goal is to place workers in jobs within 24 hours by conducting most of the screening process virtually and making a preliminary job offer without meeting the applicant in person.
The grocery chain Kroger is hiring 10,000 people across its stores and distribution centers. Regional supermarkets like H-E-B in Texas and Stop & Shop in New England and New York are hiring, too. Amazon is also planning to hire 100,000 additional people to keep up with the crush of online orders. Since making that announcement on Monday, the company said that it had seen a 150 percent increase in applications from the previous week.
Retailers and companies in the food and medical supply chain, which are seeing demand soar, are recruiting workers directly from employers like hotels and restaurants, which have largely been shut down by the pandemic and laid off staffs en masse. A restaurant worker in Rogers, Ark., who lost his job on Thursday was working at Walmart by Friday afternoon….