Baldwinites return to work, but slowly

My business is far from back to normal.”

Butch Yamali, Coral House, Baldwin

Economic recovery in Baldwin is moving along, but business is still not back to pre-Covid levels.

Similar to the rest of the country, the coronavirus pandemic caused a major setback in Baldwin’s business community, with the economic downturn reaching recession levels. According to the New York State Department of Labor, Nassau County reached a peak unemployment rate of 17.5 percent in April last year, which decreased steadily to 4.6 percent this May.

Having recovered from Covid-19 at a similar rate to the rest of county, Baldwin’s unemployment rate is currently in the 3.9 to 5.9 percent range, based on U.S. census five-year estimates. DOL unemployment data shows that before the pandemic, the county saw an unprecedented low of 3 percent unemployment in April 2019, and it stayed below 4 percent all of 2019.

Butch Yamali, owner of the Coral House in Baldwin, is having trouble finding customers and employees these days. Yamali said his venue “rents to people months and years in advance, and many people are not willing to plan that far in advance with Covid. My business is far from back to normal.”

Yamali also said some previous employees do not want to return to work because of unemployment benefits, and while other employees are returning, they want specific hours. He said staffing the Coral House is tough.

Yamali even cited an example from mid-June: “I had 15 interviews planned for one week — not one of them showed up.”

Jay Cohen, principal at AJC Search Associates, a Baldwin-based executive search firm, said, “There are multiple openings within my industry in Nassau County, but I can’t find enough people qualified to fill those positions.”

From April 2020 to 2021, Long Island saw a 92 percent increase in jobs in the leisure and hospitality industry and a 33.4 percent increase in retail, according to the Hofstra Regional Labor Review.

Though the job market is recovering, some people are still waiting out the pandemic through unemployment benefits. Recent changes to unemployment benefits because of Covid-19 allowed people to stay out of work longer.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that people staying unemployed for 27 weeks more than doubled while the Continued Assistance for Unemployed Workers Act was in effect from December last year through March.

Eligible workers who filed for unemployment during that time received an extra $300 per month on top of the unemployment pay that they qualified for in their state. The federal labor department specifies people were eligible to receive this benefit for up to 50 weeks or until Sept. 6, 2021.

The 50 weeks were an extension of the original CARES Act, which was signed in March last year and lasted for up to 39 weeks and paid $600 extra per month. The extra money allotted as part of both acts incentivized many unemployed people to stay out of work for longer if they could, sources said; for some, the money added to their unemployment checks was more than what they were paid to work.

With the expiration date on pandemic benefits upcoming in September, there is currently no discussion in Congress of renewing them.