Most working class people feed a portion of their income into the markets. Doesn't matter if you're military, police, firefighters, government workers, healthcare workers, factory workers, doctors, professionals of all sorts, corporate workers, innovators, builders, inventors, creators, servers, they're feeding money into pensions, 401Ks, IRAs, savings, etc. We don't think of them as "investors", but when the markets plummet and their purchasing power/dollars are devalued, they have no option but to stop spending. When they stop spending, or even if they cut back, the demand for goods and services plummet. And many, who have been through this a few times, they know the game, you cut back till it hurts, you cut out EVERYTHING except bare essentials, and then you cut some more. Our families even start growing gardens, trading foods, cutting off various services, anything and everything, till the economy turns around. THAT is the economy. The market IS the economy in that regard, and we won't come back till we've recovered or rebuilt. And that means the jobs, demand, plummets. The effects are so much wider than "the market", and this idea that the "stock market" isn't the economy is nonsense.