COVID-19 Job Loss May be Higher Among POCs

NPR claims that the U.S. data show a number of racial and ethnic disparities related to the coronavirus pandemic. They reported employment for white people fell 1.1%, African Americans 1.6%, Asian Americans 1.7%, and Latinos 2.1%. They also reported that in a recent survey, 45% of black workers had lost their jobs or had their hours cut compared to 31% for white workers as a result of Covid-19. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, rates of unemployment looked like this for the first quarter of the year: Asian (3.3%), White (3.6%), Latino (5.4%), and Black (6.6%). In other words, white workers actually had a higher rate of unemployment compared to Asian workers.

The job losses related to Covid-19 were pervasive across all industries. However, employment in the leisure and hospitality industry took the hardest hit, decreasing by 7.7 million jobs in April according to the Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. As a comparison, manufacturing lost only 1.3 million jobs in April. Forty-four percent of the leisure and hospitality industry is made up of Black, Asian, and Latino workers, while only 34% of the manufacturing sector are made up of people of color. Job losses related to the coronavirus pandemic were not equal across all sectors of employment, which could have contributed to the racial disparities in job losses. 

The NPR article states that people of color had more job losses as a result of Covid-19. That is not entirely accurate. Asians fared slightly better than whites when it came to unemployment in the first quarter. Black workers were more than twice as likely to be unemployed, but in some cases, they were also more likely to be working in industries hardest hit by the virus.