As this year’s theme, “Resilience and Rebuilding,” reflects, low-income communities were particularly hard hit by the Great Recession.1 And, while employment and housing show signs of improving for the nation as a whole, conditions in lower-income neighborhoods remain difficult by many measures.
The economic impact of the pandemic is highly skewed at the sector level. Consumers have adopted more cautious behaviour, and the recent tightening of restrictions has notably targeted the services sector, including hotels and restaurants, arts and entertainment, and tourism and travel. Output losses and the expected recovery will be significantly more uneven across sectors than in previous crises, as a result.