If that isn't a sign that a recession is coming, I don't know what is.
I never said average Joe won't be affected by this. What I am saying is that the big players will still be big once this is over but there will be new players as well. Also China will likely lose ground in the global production lines, and companies will likely look at alternatives, even if they have to make a compromise with scale and price. Investors like safe bets and what the current situation has taught is is that China isn't a safe option. We knew that already but the nets around the foxconn factories are a bit... Out of sight, out of mind.
16 million is a horrific number and I sincerely hope they pull through without paying a heavy price. But put your mind in a different mindset - 16 million is an incredible amount of manpower. For the 16 million - that's a tragedy but for the people with deep pockets - that's a once in a lifetime opportunity if they play their cards well. And I'm more than certain that many out there will.
Obviously this isn't reality but if you have enough money to be considered an "investor", the 16 million unemployed aren't the people in the forefront of your mind. They're also probably watching the covid task force briefings while wearing the same rose colored glasses that our mango unchained has.
It's actually worse than that. The 16.8 million figure is for new jobless claims over the last three weeks [1]. There's additional people who were already unemployed before this, and there may be even more who've lost their jobs but haven't been able to successfully file a unemployment claim yet (due to the systems being overwhelmed).
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/business/economy/unemploy...
It's not exactly over yet, it's just gotten less reported on - my local Jewel still has none on the shelf, and Amazon is out of brand-names (only sketchy sellers still have product).
And a more specific example(for the sake of illustration), so are many grocery stores: I have 3 small grocery shops around me in a quiet and residential area and they can take a breath. Even after the toilet paper crisis ended, every time I look out the window I see at least 5 vans unloading. And we are talking really tiny shops: the combined are of all 3 combined would probably not cover an area of 100 square meters. With that you have large production lines, warehouses, transportation companies and logistics fully operational and have probably reached their maximum capacity.
While tourism, air travel, restaurants(those that don't deliver food) and pubs, public events, concerts, all all of those will suffer for years to come, others will flourish.
And with all that, I'd argue that a lot of new markets will appear.
I'm well aware it's too soon to tell for certain but that's what seems very plausible to me.