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hmm okay hi good evening everyone i'm sujata gadkar wilcox i'm running for state representative here in trumbull and welcome to our community forum on connecticut's economic recovery during after covid in this forum we'll explore how to ensure that businesses get the emergency relief that they need to survive through the pandemic but also how the pandemic may change the nation's demographics and economy and how connecticut can best position itself to take advantage of those changes we'll be taking questions live from the audience so if you have questions please type them into facebook um into the facebook live feed and then we'll you know incorporate them throughout the throughout the course of the conversation so it's my pleasure to have here my colleague and friend professor fred mckinney fred is the carlton high smith chair for innovation and entrepreneurship and director of people's united center for innovation and entrepreneurship at quinnipiac university he holds a ba from ucla and was the first african american to earn a phd in economics from yale in addition to his academic career he's worked for the rand corporation and on the president's council of economic advisors and has founded several successful businesses he has a long resume i'm cutting it down for you in addition fred was recently appointed to the connecticut minority business advisory board and most importantly he's been a resident of trumbull for many years so thank you fred for joining us and for taking the time to have this discussion well thank you sujata for having me great wonderful so let's let me let me start with with a question um until questions come in um what do you think that is the general outlook for business for the business environment in connecticut as we're heading into the fall you know and potential opportunities for us sure well as everyone knows i'm not sharing any news here we've had a very tough uh last five months since uh since february when the outbreak hit and initially the state and the country and the globe actually was shut down and that had a tremendous negative impact on all businesses but i think it also had a particularly negative impact on on small businesses who uh in general did not have access to the capital to keep them afloat during uh the shutdown and so um you know we are beginning to see some signs of return not just in connecticut and the united states but literally around the world so the you know the the second quarter was a horrible quarter for connecticut and the country the third quarter which we're still in is seems to be improving there seems to be some improvement in the third quarter in the economy here locally and a lot of that has to do with having people get back to work and you know we're still struggling at it though as you know school has started and a number of schools are are having difficulty making that transition back to uh to what the way things were uh prior to the pandemic um but uh i i'm i'm cautiously optimistic about the connecticut economy uh but i do think though that this this this recession people have to understand that this was not a normal economic downturn uh this is the the greatest uh downturn in the u.s economy since the great depression so this is not even a normal recession this is much deeper than even the great recession that we experienced in 2000 beginning in 2008 through 2010 which was a difficult uh uh sort of circumstances for connecticut and the country so um i think it's going to take some time i i think that we'll have a slow recovery uh but that that doesn't mean it won't be without some some real bright spots great thank you for so let's talk about you know the support that businesses may need now what would you regard as the most valuable parts of the federal and state emergency assistance to businesses in connecticut um and you know what's lacking there to what else can be done what other support from the state and you know in terms of federal relief is necessary yeah well i think in general the uh there are several things that were passed at the federal level and also at the state level that supported businesses and the connecticut economy i think the biggest impact occurred at the federal level with the ppp program the paycheck protection program which essentially provided small businesses and businesses that actually weren't so small with uh with resources to continue to hire uh their workforce to keep their workforce employed but i think even a bigger influence on the economy was the enhanced unemployment compensation program that put an additional six hundred dollars a week in the hands of unemployed um filers on filers for unemployment insurance and that was in addition to what the state uh paid those unemployed workers but we still are seeing you know the consequences of this pandemic uh today just today we had a million new initial filers of unemployment uh in the country as a whole so you know that's that's still uh you know when it's kind of mind-boggling to think that a million new filers for unemployment is actually uh a good thing but you know uh several months ago there was six million first-time filers in a week and so we've come down in terms of the growth in the number of filers but what's good at the federal level is we had resources going to those workers and that unemployment compensation provided workers with the income that they needed to continue to support their families at levels close to what they did prior to the pandemic you know right now we're in this uh iatus where it is where the um federal government is is uh is is is not supplying that 600 bonus or our addition to uh workers uh and i think that that's that's a critical thing for not just the country uh we the workers and households and families need that money to continue to pay for things that they need their rent their their electric their utilities and their food and so those necessities uh that's where that money is going to come from when people are not working right so in in terms of um perhaps you know building connecticut's economy strengthening what kind of critical industries do you see um is maybe something as an investment for connecticut going forward to to help us in that you know slowly rebuild our economy well you know i i think one of the things that we we really have to do during this time is be is be creative we're going to have to take some risks um i i personally don't think that we are going to go back to where we were pre-pandemic um and i don't think we're going to go back for a number of reasons also i don't think that going back to normalcy is is the most desirable place to go anyway i think this pandemic has revealed some pretty significant challenges some pretty significant problems with our with our economy i mean one of the biggest issues is is inequality that we've seen that the pandemic has revealed the the diff you know now inequality can can mean your death if you're talking about health care so um i i think that in terms of opportunities uh entrepreneurs i'm a big believer in entrepreneurs i run a center for entrepreneurship at quinnipiac and i know that entrepreneurs right now the good ones are thinking about what does the future look like and what should i do to essentially create a better future for myself my company my family my community my country the globe and so entrepreneurs are thinking about how you solve these problems but i think government also has to be involved in the in and this creativity to to address the sort of the economic challenges that we're facing and i think one of the things we've seen from the pandemic is work has changed and so you know we are working most more likely from home if you can work for home you know if you're if you're doing work uh and you did most of your work sitting at a desk in front of a computer and you went to work to do that well now with because of the pandemic you don't need to go to work to do that you can do that from from the comfort of your home right um but if you know if you if you are making stuff if you are still interacting directly with um with consumers you don't have that luxury you don't have that ability so you still have to go to work and and what's also been revealed by this pandemic is you know we what is an essential worker you know and and how do we treat those essential workers and so you know we've learned that an essential worker is the person that that bags your grocery at at the local grocery store that's an essential worker but you know the economy hasn't treated those workers with the type of respect that you might think they they now deserve as we appreciate them but i think in terms of where we're going uh in this economy and what we need um we're going to see companies that develop new technologies are changing technologies that make working at home easier more productive more enjoyable and so i think the home has become more central to to how workers in connecticut will be working in the foreseeable future yeah so i think that's one area that's great and you're right about the essential workers friend i mean they kept all essential workers kept our economy going you know during the pandemic and a question for you about entrepreneurship so we you know we talked about our students it was interesting to me we started teaching and for both of us you know students have mentioned that they've started a new business in the pandemic is this a good time for creative entrepreneurship as you as you mentioned absolutely i mean absolutely i mean if you look at the the history of the american economy and american business a lot of businesses were created during very difficult times that's very interesting so you know it's uh that's that's what separates entrepreneurs really from everybody else quite frankly uh where they see where most people see problems entrepreneurs see opportunities and and it's because there are problems that entrepreneurs that solve those problems now not every not every entrepreneur is going to solve every problem but if you can solve these problems if you can show consumers workers firms and others um things that and and activities and services that maybe they didn't even know they needed until they saw it and then when they see it it becomes almost like wow i could have thought of that but you didn't so but the entrepreneur gets the benefit of that and i think that's what's gonna happen you know i'm optimistic that's why i'm optimistic i mean most entrepreneurs and people who support entrepreneurs tend to be optimistic about the future um even during these difficult times and that's not to discount how difficult these times are and how uncertain they are for people who are not entrepreneurs who rely on you know a job to support them and their families so um i'm i'm i'm thinking that you know areas where you'll see some creativity and entrepreneurship will be again in the home whether it's work related or entertainment related as people spend more time at home they're going to be spending time improving their homes for uh to do the types of things in their home that maybe they used to do or do something similar to that outside of the home what about technology biotechnology and even district you know you talked previously about distribution chains and thinking about maybe creating more local distribution are those some potential opportunities maybe for people to be creating to think creatively and help our economy exactly i mean so again because of the pandemic some of the weaknesses the structural weaknesses in our economy uh specifically about some sort of supply chain related were again revealed we we learned that we were probably not probably we were over dependent on china for certain types of products and uh and i think you know before the sort of the globalization movement was well you know if somebody else can do it for less then let them do it and everybody benefits they get employment we get lower prices those lower prices turn into higher inc is disposable income for us so everybody wins uh and that's that's under normal circumstances and this obviously was not normal but it does demonstrate that uh economies are vulnerable to um what some people call and i don't like this term but black swan events you know these things are not not normal they're they're rare and if when they happen and they do happen um you know if you if you don't have certain things in place like the ability to supply your own economy with ppe's which was the big issue you got you have problems and so what you've seen is a a real desire uh in this country and other countries around the world to sort of review what is essential what are what are the types of things that uh no economy maybe even at the state level no state should be without an ability to do for the benefit of their uh citizens and uh and so that tells you tells me that cost is is only one of the important variables and determining what should be done or who should do it or what should be produced where so we now have to look at things that maybe were cheaper to do someplace else but that creates an opportunity for an entrepreneur to say yes if you look at you know my cost of production traditionally yeah i'm more expensive but at least you have it and you want and so i think those are things though where government might have to get involved to to make it make it worthwhile for these activities to stay and so i think to a certain extent this this pandemic is good in helping people refocus on what's the purpose of the economy and uh it's not just to provide some service at the lowest possible cost right it's very interesting and we really are going to have to reimagine in this new landscape i thought it was interesting that i've already heard several students say that this is what they've been you know so it's very very interesting so when it comes to um the closing of businesses in connecticut what can the state do to forestall the closing of businesses in services transportation and the entertainment sectors that aren't that can't open until you know the next phase of reopening well i i think um you know as i mentioned the ppp was a big program that was a federal program that that provided small companies mid-sized companies with resources to retain their workforce well i think that that was good i think the bigger problem that's facing businesses right now is not their ability to maintain uh and pay their workforce their bigger problem right now is how do you pay your fixed cost and so this is where i think we need new policies to support businesses um because businesses now are seeing that you know if you don't have the the if you're if you're operating at 75 of customers because customers simply are not going to the store um it's hard to make it's hard to pay your rent it's hard to pay your leases it's hard to pay the debt to the banks that you might owe it's hard to pay your insurance so not just your property and casualty insurance but your health insurance so all of these fixed costs become more and more difficult to pay in an economy that's operating below significantly below its capacity and so you know we still have double digit unemployment uh we're going back you know compared to uh you know pre pandemic we were below four percent unemployment so that's a big change uh in terms of consumer spending so i think uh policies right now should be focused on how do we keep these businesses uh able to pay those fixed costs and it's a challenging thing because the landlords want to be paid the insurance companies want to be paid the banks want to be paid you know so but uh somebody's got it so you know we got it we got to figure out how to do it how to do that and the way that we've kind of decided to do it is at the federal level so some of these things are going to have to be addressed at the federal level but i think at the state level um the the state needs to continue to for households for instance uh we we have a moratorium on on on evictions we we need to extend that i think that that moratorium should also extend businesses you shouldn't landlords should not be able to kick out a business or a home or a household uh during this time until we get the economy back on track right and what about other things like um you now business interruption insurance things that will help a business continue yeah and yeah and again that's a double-edged sword i mean somebody who's paying for that the insurance companies are are paying for that so you know this there are there are some shoes to drop here that haven't dropped and so i that's why i said this is gonna take some time to uh for us to get out of this but i do think uh you know businesses are are looking at okay how were we prepared or or what what should we have done to better prepare for something like this and so there there'll be some changes in and how businesses operate in the future and i think that many of them will see the importance of insurance now insurance is where connecticut is strong so we have a very strong insurance sector in in connecticut so that's that's potentially good for for the connecticut economy great thank you fred and you know congratulations on your recent appointment to the connecticut minority business advisory board um you know having people like you in the state providing your expertise i think will help us reimagine you know the way things can be or can can certainly improve so give given your expertise on entrepreneurship in minority communities what do you think the state needs to do to retain existing minority businesses and to attract new ones well you know the minority business community has been particularly hard hit i was actually doing a national webinar today on black businesses across the country and uh black there were forty percent of black businesses shut down during uh since since february that's a huge number and so and that those businesses are still shut down so these are businesses that are essentially left the landscape and you ask well why what happened well again these were businesses that did not have access to capital many of them weren't eligible or did not see that that they were eligible for the ppp in the initial phases and also these were businesses that even when they became eligible did not have the relationships with the financial ins the banks that were making loans and so they were in since literally in the back of the line uh when it came to these ppp loans and many of them didn't get it or didn't get it in time to save their businesses so i think that we we should be really thinking hard about how do we shore up and have survived in minority communities because these businesses are you know they're small but they are major employers of members of the community the minority community so these are sources of income for the community to support and i think that means uh providing them with and not getting you know loans but i think they also are now talking about grants we need to be making grants for these businesses but longer term i wrote an article not too long ago that's that addressed this issue and because i had many people particularly after george floyd's situation asked me well what can they do and i told them one of the things you can do is you can buy from some black businesses and what but that's not that's easier said than done for some people because they don't know where they are and so you know i'm i'm actually working on a project right now with the black business alliance of connecticut to help them identify these black businesses where they are what they do and who they serve and i i think if these businesses would be much better off if they could attract not just black more black consumers but white consumers and consumers from across our our our state and that would be you know as businesses do well the economy does well right so that would be a good thing for all of us right what do you see as potential opportunity people have been asking you know now that we're seeing record numbers maybe of people coming into connecticut um from new york from these dense urban areas and connecticut is is very attractive and having the kind of balance that a lot of people are looking for um what kind of opportunities do we have as a state now uh given the influx of people yeah exactly so home prices and real estate are are doing pretty well right now in connecticut and other places where you have uh communities like we are we have a number of you know really suburban type communities in connecticut home prices are rising and uh as that happens um these new residents they need services and so as as people come into the state as as home construction increases you're likely to see increases in consumption and investment and um in the in the home ownership construction business so are not in the home construction business and so i think those are opportunities uh construction real estate services but eventually also retail services these folks that are coming perhaps from cities or urban environments who want less density they still want the types of access to the goods and services that they had in more dense environments and so they they'll be looking for those things but they'll also be bringing those things and so you might see you know not just uh say city residents from new york coming to connecticut you might see those new yorkers bringing in ways of doing business that they're familiar with in new york that are not as we're not as familiar with in our suburban communities yes and fred there's a question that just came in um if if i'm out of work if somebody's out of work struggling from a struggling industry right now what should they do to retrain themselves for a post-pandemic economy a great question it's a phenomenal question and um you know and i'm i'm almost hesitant to to to give you an answer um but what i what i will tell you and i'll tell anyone that um i think now is the time that you as a worker need to be um very adept in the use of technology that we see that we're beginning to use almost all the time and so i think companies are going to be looking for people who have a facility with video technology with remote learning that things that can support those types of activities i i all i will i continue to believe that having an ability to communicate well verbally as well as in writing is important and is a valuable skill that is always going to be valuable so i think working in that area being knowledgeable about the history culture tickets all of those things to you know what we call in higher education just uh you know the liberal arts education i believe is is the answer foundation yeah that's the foundation for all of these things and uh but i think technology is at the at the base of that if you can if you that makes you adaptable and i that's why i said i'm hesitant because i don't know you know where the economy is going to be five years from now but i do know that the uh the technology is going to be important so staying current on technology i think would be the key thing that's a great point for and i know that you know we're teaching our students that right it's critical thinking and the oral advocacy so one question that came in for you and you just said maybe you won't be able to answer what will connecticut's economy look like in 10 years what will look different and i know you said technology might be a part of it um and as a state how can we take advantage of where the economy is going well i i i you know if you look at the the connecticut economy we have several industries where we have uh some real strengths and one is defense another is insurance and another is is education in higher education in particular and then we have we have a pretty big pharma bio health sector you know if you look at those four industries um they are pretty strong um through the pandemic and so you know defense is uh is is a federal expense for the most part that it's that's uh the money comes from the feds but it's it's spent locally you know so companies like electric boat uh sikorsky uh ge some other companies that are doing that type of work i think they will continue to be strong our insurance sector i have some questions about insurance because you know while there will be a greater demand for insurance the insurance companies uh they've got some big bills to pay because of the crisis and so they're gonna they're gonna recover as well they're gonna be in a cycle uh the the healthcare industry and the educational health and the health care industry in education i think will uh will be good industries for connecticut i i see that you know the the pandemic may actually help connecticut universities colleges and hire it attract even more people um and so i think schools where like where we are at quinnipiac are you know it's not going to be guaranteed but i think we're in a good position to attract residents from connecticut and the surrounding states um and healthcare in general i think it's gonna it's gonna continue to be strong uh in in the foreseeable future thank you fred and i know you have another meeting to get to and you know it's really hard to talk about the economy right now as we're all kind of struggling through it but thank you so much for providing a kind of optimism for where we can go you know because i think it's important that we we are looking toward the future and seeing the potential opportunities here so it's always a pleasure to see you fred thank you so much for taking the time well thank you as you know best of luck and uh you know continue doing the great work that you're doing thank you so much fred okay bye-bye take care and thank you everyone for joining us bye