The Covid pandemic has had an enormous impact on America’s food systems. Workers in the food service industry—servers and bartenders, chefs and dishwashers—account for an estimated sixty percent of jobs lost since the pandemic reached the United States.
Of the roughly one million food businesses operating in the country before the pandemic caused wide-spread closures, roughly twenty percent are expected to never recover, meaning millions of workers will be unable to get their jobs back. And Covid has done more than decimate national employment levels: it has also exacerbated existing safety problems in food-related industries and disrupted our national supply chain.