Linchi Kwok, Ph.D.

The impact of COVID-19 is devastating. Now, it is not a question of whether the coronavirus pandemic will cause a global economic downturn . The damage has made. It is about how much the economy will shrink. The numbers are depressing The Dow’s closed at 19,173 points last Friday, the lowest since December 2, 2016. A few weeks ago, in mid-February, the Dow’s was still at its highest level, reaching close to 30,000 points. There seems no hope for a quick rebound. More states are joining California to pause non-essential businesses and urge/order residents to stay home, adding more shutdowns and layoffs. Hotels, restaurants, airlines, and retailers, for example, warned they might have to lay off millions of workers unless they received hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency funds. On Sunday, the highly-anticipated emergency economic rescue plan failed to move forward in a 47-to-47 vote in the Senate. In response, the Asian markets and the U.S. stock futures pl...

Did you ever find it challenging to decide the right career for yourself? I did when I was a student and even later in my mid-career. The reality is that many of us, especially when we were still college students, have difficulty in making the decisions regarding the major and our potential career paths. Some of us may still experience such a struggle even after we have completed a degree program. The difficulty of making a career decision as well as the corresponding psychological and emotional compression have resulted in a frequent job change and high turnover among the recent graduates. The hospitality and tourism industry, for example, has long been struggling with attracting and retaining talents . The accommodation and food services segment has the highest “quits rate” among all industry sectors, defined as “the number of quits during the entire month as a percent to total employment” by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics .  Adolescents and college stud...