The surging unemployment rate serves as a clear indicator of how the economy is suffering during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it's just part of a story which has more chapters still to be written.
Jim Fink of Business First takes a look ahead using the region's tourism industry as an example.
In Niagara Falls, New York, Fink reports a hotel occupancy rate of "zero." Without a significant bounce back, he speculates many of those hotels could be jettisoned for "ten cents on the dollar." Such a property devaluation, Fink says, would have a devastating impact on the city's fragile economy.