On the same day that Elon Musk, the famously eccentric CEO of the electric-car company Tesla, saw his net worth hit $36.6 billion, Maricela Betancourt, one of the many people who work in his factories, was agonizing over her family’s bills. Betancourt, 58, had been a janitor at Tesla’s Fremont, Calif., factory until April 7, when the company told her and 129 fellow janitors to go home and not come back until social-distancing measures were lifted. She got her last paycheck on April 8 and has no idea when the next one’s coming. She owes $1,325 for an emergency–room visit in March, and is struggling to pay for rent, Internet and food. Her husband, a construction worker, also lost his job during the COVID-19 economic collapse. So did their son Daniel, 20, who is the first in their family to go to college and was helping to pay his way with a job at an arcade. The family put their stimulus funds toward Daniel’s tuition and prays something will come through before June rent is due.
Betancourt’s boss, meanwhile, might as well live in another stratosphere. While she relied on a food bank to supplement family dinner and Daniel turned to gig work for extra -income, Musk publicly mused that he’s considering selling all of his possessions because they “just weigh you down.” Tesla’s stock price rose so steeply this year (28%) that on May 1, Musk tweeted that it was too high, sending the share price tumbling 10%. It’s still more than triple what it was a year ago.
Maricela Betancourt, 58, Janitor, San Jose, Calif. After decades of cleaning houses, Betancourt wanted a job with benefits, so she started working at Tesla. But her health insurance hadn’t kicked in when severe abdominal pain brought her to the ER, and then Tesla sent the janitors home without pay. The hospital bill keeps rising as her family struggles to pay it and other bills.
Mark Mahaney for TIME
“It’s obviously a millionaire company that has enough resources to thrive,” Betancourt told me from her home in San Jose, Calif. “But as workers, we live paycheck to paycheck, and now we don’t even have that paycheck, so we don’t know what we’re going to do.” (Tesla did not reply to a request for comment.)
The growing gap between America’s rich and everyone else is hardly new. But the extra-ordinarily rapid economic collapse catalyzed by COVID-19 has made the chasm deeper and wider, with edges that keep crumbling under the feet of those crowded on the edge. Since mid-March, more than 30 million people have filed for -unemployment—more than three times as many as lost their jobs during the two-year-long Great Recession. Meanwhile, after a steep but brief dip in March, the stock market rallied. The richest and most well–connected are seeing their wealth reaccumulate, as if by magic, while middle- and working–class families drown in debt that deepens with every passing week.
Fritz Francois, 41, Bell Captain, Miami. With no sign of his unemployment or stimulus checks, Francois, who worked at the Betsy Hotel, has been looking into delivery jobs. For now, though, he’s home, trying to teach his 4-year-old son letters and numbers while his wife works as a patient-care associate at a hospital. “Every day when I wake up, I ask God to shield her,” he says.
Rose Marie Cromwell for TIME
A playground in front of the temporarily closed Betsy Hotel is covered in caution tape as parks remain closed in Miami Beach.
Rose Marie Cromwell for TIME
Eileen Cheng, 60, Florist, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “Everything just went down to zero,” says Cheng, who has owned Yacht Flowers with her daughter since 2009. The shop primarily provided arrangements to private yachts, but few people are making use of luxury pleasure cruisers lately. Cheng is worried about what this could mean for her retirement: “I’m asking myself, Am I able to recover?”
Rose Marie Cromwell for TIME
A bucket of flowers sit in a sparse walk-in freezer that is usually filled to the brim.
Rose Marie Cromwell for TIME
The contrast isn’t just between low-wage workers and billionaire bosses. Bills are mounting for small restaurants and retailers as their applications for the federal Paycheck Protection Program go unanswered. But firms like Hallador Energy, an Indiana coal company that hired former Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt as a lobbyist, raked in millions from the program. While the median home price rose 8% in March, families across the country began -receiving eviction notices, even in states with eviction moratoriums. Small retailers closed to comply with social–distancing orders while e-commerce sales, especially from the biggest online platforms, have spiked. –Amazon reported a 26% jump in revenue in the first quarter.
RELATED STORIES
Assistance is most readily available to those with lawyers and lobbyists on the payroll. Companies like Carnival and Boeing borrowed billions thanks to intervention from the Federal Reserve. In mid-April, Carnival’s CEO told CNBC the company could survive the rest of 2020 without any revenue. Meanwhile, Cindy Kimbler, a -cashier in Columbus, Ohio, filed for bankruptcy after a collection agency began garnishing her wages over a payday loan she’d taken out to fix the car she needed to get to work.
