Just a couple of months after the mayor of Chicago announced that the city would face a budget deficit of about $700 million, updated figures have emerged.
Laurie Lightfoot said on Monday that the financial hardship is even more devastating than originally thought as the economic hit of the coronavirus pandemic continues to pick up.
On Monday, Lightfoot announced that the city will face an $800 million budget deficit in 2020 and said the city’s “pandemic budget” will be set at $1.2 billion due to ongoing economic hardship.
In February—before the pandemic—Chicago’s unemployment rate was just 3.6%. Then the economic situation in the city was complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, protests related to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and robberies that have occurred in Chicago in recent months.
“You can’t talk about our financial health in isolation from this historic moment,” Lightfoot said at a press conference on budget forecasts. “All these cross-currents affect our financial future. This is a critical turning point.”
While Lightfoot believes the city will eventually find its way to a “safer, more prosperous and more just future,” the resilience that Chicagoans have shown in the past is still needed by the city, as there are still major challenges ahead.
Lightfoot also released data on the coronavirus: Chicago has recorded more than 71,000 infections and 2,800 COVID-related deaths since the start of the pandemic. Lightfoot urged Chicagoans to remain as responsible as they were at the start of the pandemic in March.
“Rising infection rates have hindered the recovery of the city’s economy,” Lightfoot said. “Businesses such as restaurants, bars, hotels, entertainment venues of all sizes, travel companies, etc. have been particularly hard hit by COVID-19. “They are still suffering because COVID-19 is still there and the number of cases is on the rise.”
Lightfoot said that while the city has already been hit hard in 2020, she expects the hardships to continue into 2021. This led the mayor to announce that the city’s losses due to the pandemic would rise to $1+ billion before Chicago’s economy began to recover.
