Massachusetts Casino Study Concludes COVID-19 ‘Unequal Recession’

A MA cassino contemplate regarding chore losses caused by COVID-19 concluded that gaming manufacture layoffs disproportionately unnatural minorities.

Funded past the Massachusetts Bay Colony Gaming Commission (MGC) and conducted by the UMass Donahue Institute’s Economic & Public Policy Research Group, researchers found that nonwhite workers and women calibre the brunt of the pandemic job losses.

Massachusetts’ III commercial-grade casinos — Encore Hub of the Universe Harbor, MGM Springfield, and Plainridge Mungo Park — were full closed in(p) from mid-March of 2020 through and through June of that year on Gov. Charlie Barker’s (R) orders. The terzetto properties reopened inwards July, but thousands of holiday resort workers were non called endorse for months.

The UMass-MGC meditate found that workers of vividness and women were most unnatural past the furloughs and dismissals.

“Since the initial shutdown, many of these workers have returned to the casinos, but the deprivation of jobs and payoff certainly open these workers to broader elements of economic instability. Furthermore, the part of women inwards each casino’s workforce has been slacken to go back as the facilities re-open and getting even to more typical operating levels,” the UMass Executive Summary read.

Researchers added that the “COVID-19 recession proved to live the most unequal recession on record.”

Thousands Impacted

Data supplied to the Bay State gambling casino regulator revealed the severe chore furloughs and layoffs inwards the prompt aftermath of the state’s forced closures of the trio casinos.

Prior to the coronavirus, Encore, MGM, and Plainridge collectively employed 6,520 workers. The pandemic caused tally casino employ to free fall to 2,001 — a 69% reduction. It would make been much worsened if it weren’t for Wynn Resorts keeping 1,854 workers on paysheet during the shutdowns.

MGM Springfield’s task tally dropped to 149 workers and Plainridge Mungo Park simply 18 people remaining on staff. The racial and grammatical gender make-up of those who managed to keep on their compensate during the closures “was to a greater extent whitened and more manly than the pre-pandemic workforce.”

The layoffs felled seam most hard on people of color, which reflected a broader trend crosswise the commonwealth that when there’s a crisis similar this, it often falls to the highest degree heavily on folks who are, for various socioeconomic reasons, a bit to a greater extent vulnerable,” Seth Thomas Peake, a senior research analyst at the UMass Donahue Institute, told the MGC.

Sports Betting Prep

During in conclusion week’s MGC meeting, commissioners also addressed sports betting. Legislation to spread out gaming inwards the commonwealth to permit sports gaming is widely supported in the General Court.

State Sen. Michael Rodrigues (D-Westport) has faced some criticism for holding upwardly House Bill 3933. The sports betting vizor easily passed the House by a 156-3 ballot inwards July of 2021. Rodrigues chairs the Senate Ways and Means Committee where the statute has sat since.

Rodrigues assures that act on the step is going on in arrears the scenes. And when the committee is ready to ballot on the gaming issue, i testament occur.

If the Senate and Baker eventually signalize turned HB3933, MGC Chair Cathy Judd-Stein said the commission testament not trail its feet in getting sports betting up and running.

“We feel really surefooted that with all the due industriousness we’re doing, if we were designated the regulator of legalized sports wagering, we’d follow able to have those regulations inwards position nimbly and we’d be able-bodied to starting issuing licenses,” Judd-Stein said.