It’s been 21 months since the COVID vaccine debuted, and love still isn’t in the air. Signet Jewelers stock slid 10.6% on Thursday after the company reported a 9.3% year-over-year decline in sales, and CEO Gina Drosos says lingering loneliness owing to the pandemic is partly to blame.
Drosos attributed the company’s disappointing quarter to two factors. The first are economic pressures on consumers such as regional bank failures, lower tax refunds, and a “continued narrative from the Fed” of reining in inflation by pushing unemployment higher through interest rate hikes. But the second factor isn’t economic—it’s that Americans are still struggling to find love despite the federal government declaring the national pandemic emergency over.
