“You just have to crawl and gut,” he said. “We are really struggling to survive.”
But in Arnone’s other home appraisal field, his friends and colleagues are reaping the rewards of the booming housing market, where January sales increased 23.7% from a year ago, according to the National Association of Realtors. Ultra-low mortgage rates have sparked a wave of refinancing, requiring further appraisals.
“I don’t have much to complain about,” said Traci Warner, Arnone’s friend and domestic appraiser in Waldorf, Maryland, south of Washington. After her husband was fired from the sales job in April, Warner’s work declined.
It is not that things are perfect, but unlike Mr. Gallagher, she does not feel that she is barely holding on.
This contrast is reflected in the larger economy. Weekly unemployment claims by newly laid-off workers remain at historically high levels, even with stock indexes reaching record levels.
Vaccines have arrived, but their slow release means it will be months before anything like normal activity can be resumed in restaurants, hotels, gyms, airports, shopping malls and other businesses that depend on bringing people together.
“It’s very uneven,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist for the United States at Oxford Economics, a forecasting and research group. “The recovery of the most vulnerable parts of the population will take years.” Not only did wages and salaries fall for the most affected segments of the workforce, he noted, but also overall employment and labor force participation.
At the top, the gains were surprising. In eight months after the pandemic hit the United States, the wealth of the country’s approximately 650 billionaires has grown by $ 1 trillion, according to a November study by the Institute for Policy Studies and other progressive groups. This included a $ 70 billion increase for just one of these tycoons: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.