FILE PHOTO: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, wearing a face mask, testifies before the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee during a hearing on oversight of the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve response to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 30, 2020. Tasos Katopodis/Pool via REUTERS
(Reuters) – Despite “a lot of strength in the economy,” millions of U.S. workers displaced from restaurant, travel, and similar jobs will struggle to find new employment and need steady support from the government, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Thursday, warning a full jobs recovery could take years.
“There is a particular part of the economy which involves getting people together and feeding them, flying them around the country, having them sleep in hotels, entertaining them,” Powell said in online remarks to the Fed’s annual economic symposium. “That part of the economy will find it very difficult to recover…That is millions of people who are going to struggle to find work. We need to stay with those people….We are looking at long tail of probably a couple of years at least.”
(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
