Nearly 90% of Massachusetts restaurant workers have lost their jobs

Just a small quibble: the article says 211,000 restaurant workers were laid off or furloughed in March, from a base of 261,000 workers in February. That would be an 81% reduction in staff.

In Adam's defense, the MassLive headline says restaurants have cut 93% of staff, but the body of the article says that 93% of restaurants reported staff reductions.

Obviously, I'm not at all trying to minimize the impact of this loss on people's livelihoods. It's a staggering amount of job losses either way.

And many owners will be saddled with insurmountable debt for the rest of their lives.

I know people are doing take-out but not being able to sell booze im sure makes a lot of these places barely able to keep their lights on.

The high falutin' days of Artisan Cocktails hand crafted by a 1860's cosplaying bearded bro-dude in suspenders are long gone.

The statistics in the MassLive article don't support the article's headline, and thus the headline in Adam's piece is also wrong.

The relevant line in the MassLive article is "93% of Massachusetts restaurant operators cut staff in their establishments. The average reduction in staff was by 87%." Nowhere in the article does it give a percentage of total restaurant staff in the state who have been laid off.

One way of estimating that number would be to multiply 93% x 87% [0.93 x 0.87], and you get 0.81 or 81%.

That's still a lot, and it's an alarming number, but it's not 93% or even "nearly 90%."

It's also interesting that 7% of restaurants apparently haven't cut any of their staff, at least as of the date of that survey.

For the restaurants that I've been in, or walked past when they're open for take-out, I see the staff leaning on the counter and chit-chatting at times they're normally busy and running around. In other words, maybe they're hanging on, but nobody seems to be doing very well financially.

The only bright side I've seen is that at least in one local place, the tip jar has been looking pretty full.

Please remember; Order take-out from your local places once-in-a-while during quarantine. And tip well.

The article states that 93% of Mass. restuarants have laid off workers, not that 93% of all workers have been laid off. And according to the story, pre-Covid employment in the industry was 261K, and now it's 50K - which doesn't jibe with any of the percentages given.

Terrible news regardless. But the figures cited aren't clear at all.