Asian American Workers Face Higher Long-Term Unemployment Rates Amid Pandemic
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Asian American workers have faced steeper long-term unemployment rates than their Black, white and Latino peers during the economic downturn resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, new research shows.
Almost half, or 46%, of unemployed Asian American workers had been out of work for more than six months in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Pew Research Center data. Black unemployed workers saw a 38% long-term unemployment rate at the end of 2020, followed by white (35%) and Hispanic (34%) unemployed workers. “The reason for the relatively high long-term unemployment rate among Asian unemployed workers is not entirely clear,” Jesse Bennett, a Pew research assistant, wrote in the report, which was released last week. “But it may be partially explained by the fact that they tend to be disproportionately represented in states most impacted by coronavirus shutdowns.”
In 2019, 31% of Asian Americans lived in California, a state that experienced some of the longest pandemic-inspired shutdowns, according to Pew. New York, the state with the second-largest share of the Asian American population, was also hit hard by the pandemic. The state suffered the third-most employment losses since the start of the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
