26 November 2020
The pandemic has upended Thanksgiving and the shopping season that the holiday kicks off, creating a new crop of economic winners and losers.
The big picture: Just as it has exacerbated inequality in every other facet of American life, the coronavirus pandemic is deepening inequities in the business world, with the biggest and most powerful companies rapidly outpacing the smaller players.
The winners ...
- Online grocery: Orders are up 560% in the last week (compared with October) as most people do their Thanksgiving dinner shopping online, according to Adobe Analytics.
- Small turkeys: There's a shortage of 8 to 16-pound birds in America as people prepare to celebrate the holiday with just their immediate families this year.
- E-commerce: Black Friday has moved online this year, and Amazon, along with all the other big retailers that are offering delivery, are seeing unprecedented sales surges. Holiday shoppers are 32% more likely to buy from an e-commerce-capable retailer than not, Adobe Analytics reports.
- Thai restaurants: Thai food seems to be Americans' top pandemic-era takeout choice, says marketing analytics company Zenreach. Thai restaurants are operating at 45% of their normal capacity, compared with the industry average of 35%.
... and the losers:
- Small businesses: Hundreds of thousands of small, independent businesses remain closed around the country, and close to 60% of them have now shuttered for good, according to Yelp data.
- The leisure and hospitality sector: Hotels, restaurants, theme parks and other businesses that typically thrive during the holidays have been hardest hit. 65% of small businesses in this sector have closed in San Francisco, 72% in New Orleans, 55% in D.C., and 60% in San Antonio, according to the World Economic Forum.
- Malls: With cases spiking, long Black Friday lines will be a thing of the past. 74% of people plan to shop online this weekend to avoid crowds, per a Deloitte survey.
- Travel: Even though millions traveled to a Thanksgiving celebration this year, far fewer did so than in years past. Air travel saw a 48% drop.
- "Turkey first-timers": As people decide against traveling for Thanksgiving this year, those who are typically dinner guests and are tasked with just showing up with a bottle of wine will have to attempt to cook the feast themselves, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The bottom line: This pandemic holiday season will be especially painful for the millions of disproportionately lower-income Americans who are still out of work, says Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
- "The norm for most Americans is to have a little bit extra this season, whether that's to give gifts or host a celebration," she says. "The inability to do that because of finances is surely wreaking emotional havoc on families."
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.