From APnews.com….
Nearly a third of California’s restaurants permanently closed and two-thirds of workers at least temporarily lost their jobs as the pandemic set in more than a year ago and Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed the nation’s first statewide lockdown, a legislative committee reported Tuesday.
Few business sectors were more battered than the dining industry, which before the pandemic included more than 76,000 eating and drinking establishments employing 1.8 million people, according to the California Restaurant Association.
But with the shutdown, as many as a million of those workers were quickly furloughed or laid off, the association told the state Senate’s Special Committee on Pandemic Emergency Response.
“COVID-19 has upended all of our lives, but its impacts have been felt more acutely in the restaurant industry,″ said Democratic state Sen. Josh Newman, who heads the committee and led the hearing on the issue. “It is clear that recovery will take time.”
