In 2020, estimates put the number of freelancers in the United States at 59 million Americans. That number is anticipated to sharply increase to 90.1 million on 2028. Small Business Playbook wrote in a February 9th article that “The National Restaurant Association estimates that compared to pre-pandemic levels, restaurant employment is down close to 2.5 million jobs and that the industry lost $240 billion in sales in 2020. And while the full impact of the pandemic is still playing out, it appears that hundreds of thousands of restaurant businesses have permanently closed.” This excludes a number of freelancers in the food industry that were sidelined by and hit hard economically by the pandemic as gig employment from weddings to events disappeared.
Those displacement numbers become even more stark for women, on Feb 21st 2021 CBS News reported that nearly 3 million women have left the workforce representing a 2.8% decline in employment from pre-pandemic levels in November 2019. It’s a huge talent drain from the workforce that threatens to put women back years in terms of career advancement and pay equity.
For our very first guest on the POLITICAL MOTIVES podcast we will be welcoming Kathy Skutecki, a marketing consultant in the culinary industry. Kathy has been a freelance consultant, pastry chef and sous chef in the food industry for over 15 years after a stint working in the advertising agency business. She shares with us today the challenges she has faced in the last year during the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lock downs. Living in Chicago, a die-hard Chicago Cubs fan and a graduate of Loyola University of Chicago’s school of business where she received her MBA, Kathy was successful in making the transition from Madison Avenue to culinary consultant and her stories from the lock down will be familiar to many listeners. This is the first in a series of interviews we plan on doing with real life voters to understand what motivates them. Let’s get to it.
Go to anchor.fm, Apple or Spotify to hear the podcast in full.
https://anchor.fm/political-motives/episodes/The-Voices-of-Covid-19-Unemployment-ev7c15
I want to thank Kathy Skutecki for joining us today on Political Motives. You can follow her cooking exploits on her Instagram at the handle stresscake or head over to her blog “Stresscake the bake and release theory” at stresscake.wordpress.com. If you are interested in supporting staff impacted by unemployment in the restaurant industry, please consider donating to the National Restaurant Association’s Restaurant Employee Relief Fund. https://rerf.us/ - National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation – Restaurant Employee Relief Fund.