Not all businesses will decide to reopen even if they are allowed to; many will choose to stay closed, fearing too few customers to make it worth the cost. That was the situation in parts of Georgia on Friday, as many establishments kept their doors shut. But furloughed workers whose employers recall them to their jobs would in most circumstances lose their unemployment benefits, even if their pay might not return to the levels they were earning before the crisis.

That is particularly difficult for manicurists or wait staff who rely on tips from customers who might not show up. They would also lose out on both regular unemployment benefits and an additional $600 a week from the federal government.

Rashad Robinson, the president of the racial justice advocacy group Color of Change, said Georgia’s governor “has targeted a whole set of businesses where black people both work and patronize.” For those workers and customers, he said, “it is an absolute death sentence.”

“The inequality we’re seeing isn’t unfortunate like a car accident,” Mr. Robinson said. “It’s unjust. It’s being manufactured through a whole set of choices.”

Even though they face higher risks from reopening, a small but meaningful share of financially hurt workers is clamoring to return to work. One in 11 Americans, according to national polling data by the digital research firm Civis Analytics, has lost a job, hours or income — or knows a family member who has — during the pandemic but opposes mandatory lockdowns.

Americans who earn $50,000 a year or less are more than twice as likely to say they or a family member have lost jobs amid the crisis as those who earn more than $150,000, the polling found. Higher earners and whites are far more likely to say they can work from home during the pandemic than lower earners and black and Latino Americans, according to an April poll for The New York Times by the online research firm SurveyMonkey.

The University of Chicago economists Simon Mongey and Alex Weinberg released a study last month on the Americans who work in jobs that require people to be in close physical proximity (like nail salon workers) or allow little chance to work from home (like fast-food or maintenance workers). They found those workers were disproportionately nonwhite, low income, born outside the United States and not college graduates.