Alex Billman was among the workers at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts loading in for the March 2020 opening of “Until the Flood,” a play inspired by the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. But suddenly, the crew received an order to pack everything up in two days, before Denver’s stay-at-home order took effect.

Billman, a sound technician, assumed the shutdown would last a couple of weeks, or maybe a couple of months. Instead, he said, it has been his longest period of unemployment since he was a paperboy at age 12.

“Having a job that is the same job but completely different every two months is an aspect that I loved. There’s not really anything else like it,” he said.

With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting virtually every institution, industry and even electoral politics, coronavirus restrictions hit one group of people early and hard: those working in restaurants, hospitality and events.

The first major sign of what was to come occurred when a physics convention which was to bring 11,000 people to Denver from around the world was suddenly canceled at the beginning of March. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics about arts, entertainment and recreation workers – which includes the live events and performances industry – revealed a nearly 50% unemployment rate in April 2020. Three months earlier, the rate had been 4.7%.

Billman, who found work temporarily at a virtual reality exhibition that ushered people through one at a time out of caution, was surprised at how many potential employers dismissed his years of audio-visual and Internet technology experience.

“I’ve gotten several responses of ‘these are non-transferable skills,’ ” said Billman, 29. ” ‘We don’t do theater.’ On the other hand, independent contractor, gig work became so competitive so fast.”

The frustration was familiar to Ksenia Poteraj, the single mother of a nine-year-old son who learned on March 18 that she was laid off at her downtown Denver hotel.

“Close your eyes that I don’t have experience in your industry and see that I have other skills,” said Poteraj, 36, who was a sales manager at the time of the layoff.

Originally from Russia, she became a citizen in 2011 and started work as a part-time banquet server. She was drawn to the hospitality industry because “it’s very friendly for people with accents, people who are a little bit different.”

In the past year, Poteraj applied for Medicaid and unemployment. Her partner moved in to help support her. She started in a master’s degree program and organized a Facebook support group for hospitality workers.

“I felt like it was a necessity to support people who I worked with and to cooperate and try to communicate what’s happening. Especially for people in such departments as housekeeping, people who don’t have the opportunity to go and search by Internet or express something in good English, to go and search for unemployment information,” Poteraj added.

Other people adjusted differently to changes in their industry: Michael Lawrence, who claimed the restaurant where he worked had shut down because of government intervention, sued Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and Gov. Jared Polis days after the enactment of stay-at-home orders. His case against the health restrictions served to broadcast his doubts about the severity of the pandemic, which has killed more than 500,000 Americans.

“Before the defendants’ irresponsible and imprudent response to covid-19, when the plaintiff looked at job boards, such as craigslist.com for Denver, it was typical for the Case plaintiff to find 250-300 new cooking jobs posted each day. Now it is typical to find two or three new job postings per day,” Lawrence wrote after a federal judge dismissed his case last year.

Lawrence told Colorado Politics this week he was unsure if he would return to cooking.

The Colorado Restaurant Association surveyed 279 restaurateurs in January 2021, and estimated that 40% of employees have been laid off or furloughed in the past year, equating to 94,000 jobs.

“Restaurants will not even begin to recover until we’re back at 100% indoor capacity,” said Sonia Riggs, president and CEO of the association, on Thursday. During the final months of 2020, she added, leisure and hospitality businesses in Colorado lost 41,600 jobs, even though all of the other sectors added 16,600 positions total.

One bright spot is that leisure and hospitality will likely grow the most this year, according to a forecast from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds Business Research Division. Still, some people formerly in the sector will likely not be a part of the returning wave of workers.

Celeste Berke Knisely remembers snow falling and being in her office, seeing people cry because cuts were coming. A former director of sales and marketing for Stonebridge Companies, she said she had dozens of people on her sales team, responsible for hotels coast to coast. She hired every person who worked for her.

“We started to get mass cancellations” of conferences, she recalled. “But never had I thought two weeks later what we were asked to do… .” She trailed off.

Knisely was among the managers who had to implement the “reductions in force.” She tried to visit those who were local, and called people who were not, to tell them they were out of a job.

Days later, Knisely said she received a message asking her to come to a company leader’s office. She learned she would be let go, too.

“The weeks afterward, my team members – the ones that were still there and didn’t know I wasn’t there – asked me for help and support,” she recalled. “That was hard.”

She started connecting people she worked with to jobs, and trained them on using the business-focused social media platform LinkedIn. She took online courses, wrote an e-book and joined with a consultant to start a business that helps job seekers navigate LinkedIn.

“I took on this hustle mentality,” Knisely explained. “For me, I had money and savings and could take a step back and reevaluate my life, and go in a different direction. I know that not everybody is in that same place.”

Those in the affected industries felt that depression and trauma would linger for workers, with service industry employees already subject to higher rates of mental health stressors. Some also worried about a lack of understanding about their unique experiences from the broader population.

Billman will have another seven months until the first show at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts is scheduled to resume, although he will return briefly in May to put in new equipment. He is worried that people have lost appreciation for live arts and entertainment, after live events ceased to bring people together, in favor of streamed movies and television.

“I fear feeling…” Billman started, pausing to search for the right word, “unappreciated, but also being their greatest source of entertainment.”

Poteraj, when asked whether she would return to her hospitality job tomorrow if her employer offered her the chance, did not know how she would answer.

“It’s a really hard decision,” she acknowledged.

“It’s not a happy ending. I’m still not making any money,” Knisely added of her new consulting business. “I also still have those fears and those doubts and impostor syndrome, just like everybody else does.”