The Great Recession, but maybe worse?

           This morning we woke up to the news that there are now more than 26 million Americans who have filed for unemployment in the last five weeks.  You may have heard parents or newspeople talking about how we're going back to 2008, the time of the Great Recession that resulted largely from over-speculation in the housing market.  And while we may be able to look at today and say that the coronavirus and its collateral damage is no American's fault, it doesn't change the reality for most Americans: the economy is tanking, and they are going to suffer.
            8.7 million jobs were lost in the Great Recession.  22.4 million jobs have been created since then.  And today, all those jobs that we added to the US economy are gone.  In five weeks, 11 years' worth of development has disappeared just like that.  What does this mean for our families?  Well, to be honest, a large group of our school will be fine.  There will be adjustments to our lifestyles, surely, as money clearly does not grow on trees: a casualty of a suffering economy is a damaged stock market.  Business and consumer confidence alike must increase for anyone to be doing better than they have been doing financially speaking especially.  But our school is also home to many families that cannot afford these losses.  The 2 trillion dollar stimulation package has still not made its way to most, and it is barely covering minimums for most that rely on it.
             The major issue that the administration has seen for students in our switch to online learning is not access to WiFi, nor is it an extreme lack of motivation: it has been that we have many students in our district with unstable housing.  If that was already a problem, as it was for many families already, imagine what this tumultuous situation must be doing to their living situations.  Today, I ask you to think of the students at our school who are facing life-changing circumstances.  No one knows when our economy will recover from this, or even stop sinking, and there haven't been any positive signs yet.  We may not see some of our friends again.  We must use our knowledge from microeconomics to ensure that when we are making the decisions as adults, we never again allow such a preventable and petrifying situation to happen.