Last week on the show, we started a conversation about the massive job loss from COVID-19.

The true unemployment rate is probably around 19-20% right now.

No one was prepared for this.

If a year ago the same person had brought me this table of statistics and said this is

what I calculated, I would have said you did something wrong.

So how will re-employment happen?

Last week, the U.S. Department of Labor delivered a huge surprise.

Its jobs report for the month of May found that the economy, rather than losing another

8 million jobs, as was predicted, actually added back to a half million jobs.

That said, the unemployment rate is still higher than it's been since the Great Depression,

and a lot of the lost jobs in retail and restaurants, for instance, are unlikely to return

anytime soon.

Many high-income employees like consultants and lawyers and middle managers will suffer,

but a lot of lower-paying jobs may simply disappear, whether due to lack of demand, or

the increase in automation.

Last week, we looked at one employment policy that was designed to help a certain category

of low-income employee, former prisoners, often young men without a college degree.

The policy is called Ban the Box, and it got rid of the box that job applicants used

to check to indicate that they had been in prison.

The idea was that employers would be less likely to rule out such an applicant early in

the process and give them a better chance of getting hired.

But the policy is mostly backfired, punishing applicants who hadn't been to prison, but

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