10 OPPORTUNITY ZONE MAGAZINE | VOLUME 2 • ISSUE 1
THE OPPORTUNITY ZONE INCENTIVE : POISED TO LEAD IN THE UPCOMING
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
By Marc Schultz
Why the Opportunity Zone ( OZ ) incentive can be used as a powerful recovery tool and be combined with most other federal , state and local incentives .
2020 was a turbulent year . The year started with an
impeachment trial , and then a once-every-hundred-year pandemic shut down the U . S . economy . The year ended with a presidential election where each candidate received a record breaking number of votes with the incumbent president challenging the election results .
In 2021 , we are now facing an economic crisis as a result of this deadly pandemic . The U . S . Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that , as of January 2021 , the unemployment rate was 6.3 % or 10.1 million unemployed persons . 1 This is almost twice the amount of the pre-pandemic levels ( 3.5 % or 5.7 million ). The Economic Policy Institute ( EPI ) has provided that the labor market is down 9.9 million jobs since February 2020 . 2 EPI claims that after adjusting for misclassification and undercounting and taking into account folks that have quit the labor force , 25.5 million workers are considered to be jobless or have seen pay and hours drop as a result of the pandemic . 3
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