There has been disruption of “normal” daily life around New Orleans for some time now due to the recent snow storm.
Small businesses who have to rely on workers being able to come in (and customers being able to traverse the roadways to do the same) have felt the impact of the freeze-in especially hard. UNO Business Professor Mark Rosa explains that this domino effect will cause a loss of wages that may take some time to recover from.
“It’s just such a hit. You try to get your employees back and you want your customers back. But, everybody is teetering on the question of ‘when can we safely navigate our way around’ and that standoff between the customers and workers causes businesses to stay idle,” Rosa emphasizes.
Even those who have managed to keep a rainy day savings account are probably feeling the brunt of lost wages after multiple days without being able to conduct business, Rosa says. “That’s lost revenue, lost wages … just total losses there. We had one day of snow and look at the ripple effect it’s causing now. We got one day of snow, but normalcy could take close to a week to come back,” emphasizes Rosa.
Even if you’ve saved responsibly, Rosa notes, you may have to get creative following a multi-day lockdown. “How long did it take you to accrue whatever your savings might be? It could be months, it could be a year, but it took a long time for many. You go through it MUCH more quickly than it took to accrue. So, even those who saved responsibly are having to deal with the reality of when the work stops the pay stops and the amount of time it may take to recover is beyond their control for many reasons,” Rosa notes.
“I don’t think a lot of people realize how devastating this event could be and how it ripples through the economy in a very short order,” he adds. He does note that normalcy will return, although a bit later than many might be financially comfortable with.