Strain of current shutdown has some struggling to make ends meet

The current shutdown has not been easy for people like Joni Lariviere.

“It's been very very difficult for me emotionally, financially, mentally,” she said.

Unable to work from home, lockdowns and shutdowns have put workers like Lariviere in a precarious position.

“I worry where my next meal is going to come from or how am I going to pay this next bill,” Lariviere said.

Living alone in Wheatley, Lariviere works in the gaming industry as a bingo caller in Chatham.

Lariviere says she only qualifies to receive $270 a week from the federal government's lockdown benefit.

“Which is barely a rent payment,” she said. “They don't take into consideration there's car insurance. Your phone. Your essentials, gas, hydro things like that.”

Like many, Lariviere hopes this is the last time we see any type of shutdown or pause but she worries about what premier Doug Ford might do in the coming months.

“When he talked about the three phases of reopening, the third phase being March 4th. Well here comes St. Patty's Day and here comes Easter,” she said. “What's gonna happen?”

As the shutdown brings part of the workforce to a standstill there are still a lot of job vacancies in the region.

According to Workforce Windsor-Essex there were roughly 2,200 job openings on Friday.

They say there are roughly 2,000 job postings open on any given day.

Tashlyn Tesky, manager of projects and research, says the cumulative number of jobs available for the month of December was 5,500.

October and November were closer to 7,000.

Despite thousands of jobs available, Lariviere and others like her enjoy what they do and aren't looking to change professions.

But if there is another lockdown, some workers may be left without a choice to make ends meet.

“There's a lot of options right now for folks that do wanna make that switch or if they find in a couple of months or couple of years that that's kind of the time to make the switch there's a lot of options for them,” Tesky.