疫情中，很多人失业。但影响最大的，是那群在大城市挣扎求生存的人。他们尚无足够的积累融入这座城市之中，离开又有不甘。而且 ，离开后一切便又重新开始。
Maria Moved to Britain from Poland a decade ago . She spent the first four years living in London before cheaper housing drew her to Stevenage, a drab but prosperous commuter town 30 miles north of the capital. Until March this year, she worked in a London sandwich shop, even though the train season-ticket swallowed around a third of her income. She was furloughed in April and recently found out her job would not be coming back. “I’m still getting paid until the end of September,” she says, “but who knows after that? I’ve applied for about 40 jobs so far”
Maria 十年前从波兰移居到英国。在廉价的房子把她吸引到 Stevenage （一个距离首都北方30公里，单调但繁忙的通勤小镇）之前，她在伦敦住了四年。直到今年的3月，她还在伦敦的一家三明治店工作，尽管只通勤费就就占用了她三分之一的薪水。在四月份的时候她被暂时休假了，并且最近他发现，她彻底失业了。她说：“到9月底前，我还能够达到工资，但之后怎么办呢？我目前为止已经申请了大约40份工作。”
Economists in America have observed that poor people in prosperous areas have been hit especially hard by the covid-19 downturn. Data released by the Office for National Statistics (ons) on September 15th suggests the same is true in Britain. The headline figures show a healthy labour market, with the unemployment rate in July just 4.1%, barely higher than in February. But as the government’s furlough scheme, which supported the jobs of more than 9m workers, is tapered back, cracks are beginning to appear.
美国的经济学家发现，新冠引起的衰退对富裕地区穷人的打击尤其明显。国家统计局在九月十五日发布的数据显示，在英国也是同样的情况。整体趋势显示劳务市场仍然健康，在7月份时，失业率仅有4.1% ，仅比二月份高一点点。 但是随着政府休假规划的缩减（该计划为超过900万人提供了工作），裂痕开始显现。
Analysis of redundancy consultations by the Institute for Employment Studies, a research outfit, suggests that an additional 445,000 jobs will be lost between July and September. Advertised vacancies have bounced back from the record low they hit in April, but are still almost 50% below last year. Samuel Tombs of Pantheon Macroeconomics, a consultancy, fears the ons is understating the rise in unemployment. Social distancing has disrupted the usual collection of survey data, forcing the ons to rely more on telephone interviews. As a result, renters, who are less likely to answer the phone, are now being undercounted— and they are more likely than homeowners to have fallen out of work.
就业协会（一个研究机构）对裁员咨询的分析表明，在七月到九月之间，会有另外44.5万人失去工作。广告位（招聘）的空缺已经从被疫情冲击后 4月的最低点有所回升，但仍然比去年同期低了一半。咨询公司 Pantheon Macroeconomics 的 Samuel Tombs 担心国家统计局低估了失业率的上升。社交距离打乱了正常的调查数据收集，统计局只能更多的依靠电话当方式。最终，那些租户接到电话的可能性很小，他们不会被统计到——并且，他们比房东更容易失业。
The early evidence suggests that unemployment is growing fastest far from the typical job-market black spots. Claims for universal credit, the main out-of-work benefit, rose by 57% between March and July in north-east England, but more than doubled in London and the south-east. In Stevenage, claims have increased by almost 140%. Staff at the town’s job centre can’t remember such a busy time. ons job numbers show the biggest falls in the south-east. Thus it is areas that previously enjoyed the highest employment rates that are now seeing the steepest drops.
早期证据表明，在远离就业市场中心的地方，失业率增长最快。3-7月份，英国东北部申请通用信贷（主要失业经济来源）的人数涨了57%，而伦敦和东南部地区则增加了一倍多。在 Stevenage ，也增加了将近 140% 。镇上就业中心的职工，从来没有这么忙过。国家统计局的数据显示，东南部下降幅度最大。因此，先前就业率最高的地区现在正在经历急速下滑。
This reflects the pattern of the recession so far. Sectors such as physical retail and hospitality are the most likely to be harmed by social-distancing measures, and have suffered big drops in output. In normal times such sectors do well where people have more disposable income to spend. And the businesses they contain tend to run on thin margins, so even a small drop in revenue can push up unemployment.
这反映了迄今为止衰退的趋势。像酒店、零售等实体行业更有可能受到社交管控措施的影响最为严重，并且产出已经在大幅下降。在正常情况下，这些行业表现很好，因为人们有更多的可支配收入去消费。而且这些行业往往利润很低，因此即使很少的收入下降也会推高失业率。
The knock-on consequences of the rise in working from home, which has been bigger in London than in other British cities, are being felt across the capital’s enormous commuter belt. The 2,900 jobs being cut by Pret A Manger, a sandwich chain, and the 5,000 from Upper Crust, an operator of train-station food concessions, will be concentrated in the south-east. While the prosperous commuters who reside in places like Stevenage have mostly been shielded from the first wave of economic damage, the same is not true of their poorer neighbours.
伦敦在家工作的人数要比其他英国城市多很多，这从首都的通勤线就能感受得到，这引起了连锁反应。三明治连锁店 Pret A Manger 正在裁员 2900人。火车站特许食品经营公司 Upper Crust 裁员 5000人，裁员将集中在东南部。尽管居住在像 Stevenage 这样的交通核心地区的上班族，大多没有受到第一波经济冲击的影响，但他们的穷邻居却并非如此。
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