This time is different

摘要

HAIR SALONS tend to be recession-proof. People always need haircuts. During the financial crisis of 2007-09 the number of hairdressers in America even rose. For Sylvia, who owns a small salon in Amsterdam, that crisis was very different from today's. "Lockdown came out of nowhere and I had no buffer." She is heartened that regulars phoned in when she reopened. "If it had lasted any longer", she says, fighting back tears while disinfecting the previous customer's seat, "I would have gone under." Women have borne the brunt of the economic disruption caused by the pandemic. In America, despite making up less than half of the workforce, they accounted for 55% of jobs lost in April. In Britain mothers are one-and-a-half times as likely as fathers to have lost or quit their jobs during lockdown, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), a think-tank.