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Europe Teeters on Precipice of Mass Unemployment

Jamie Dettmer

   It was only two weeks ago that employees returned to work at the
   Trafford Centre, the third largest shopping mall in Britain. Five miles
   west of the English city of Manchester, shoppers lined up early on a
   wet morning eager to embark on their first shopping spree for nearly
   three months.

   Store staff were relieved their jobs seemingly had survived the
   pandemic. "I can't tell you how wonderful it feels to have visitors
   back," the center's manager, Alison Niven, told reporters.

   Now she and her staff are worried that the reopening was a chimera.

   Last week, the owner of the Trafford Centre, Intu, which also runs 16
   other mega shopping malls in Scotland, Wales and England, announced
   insolvency, becoming the most significant corporate casualty so far in
   Britain of the coronavirus pandemic. The collapse of Britain's biggest
   shopping-mall owner is the starkest warning yet of the pandemic-related
   economic woes the country is likely to face. More than 100,000 retail
   jobs depend on the malls owned by Intu -- and if a buyer cannot be
   found for the properties, those jobs will be lost.