Valerie Wilson at the Economic Policy Institute says those are most likely professional, office-type jobs.
“Given occupational segregation, African Americans are less likely to be in those higher-paid occupations,” Wilson said. “That in large part accounts for the disparity in the share of African American workers able to work remotely during this time.”
She also says Black households are more likely to have just a single wage-earner to depend on.
“When you lose your job, all of the resources available to that household go,” Wilson said. “It’s unlikely anyone who loses a job now will be able to quickly find another one.”
Marketplace
June 5, 2020
A new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) states that racial and economic inequality have made Black workers, who comprise about 12 percent of the workforce, most vulnerable to the coronavirus. As of April, less than half of the adult Black population was employed. Many of those African Americans who were working are part of the army of low-paid essential workers, risking their lives for a paycheck. (Black women and Latinas are the backbone of this army.) And they are more likely to be uninsured, so they do not get medical care until they fall severely ill.
The Center for Public Integrity
June 5, 2020
At least one survey from the Economic Policy Institute found that millions of Americans gave up trying to seek benefits or didn’t even attempt to due to states’ overwhelmed and antiquated unemployment systems.
News 5 Cleveland
June 5, 2020
Black workers suffer from a phenomenon academics call “first fired, last hired.” Black workers are more often than not terminated before white workers, because the population works in industries more susceptible to economic woes. Fewer than 20 percent of black workers were able to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to 30 percent of white workers, according to a March study by the Economic Policy Institute.
Crain's Detroit Business
June 5, 2020
About 21.5 million Americans were still collecting unemployment benefits, known as continuing claims, for the week ending May 23, according to the Labor Department. But an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute finds that looking at all unemployment programs, 37.2 million people are either receiving benefits or have applied for benefits and waiting to hear if they will receive them. That’s nearly a quarter of the American workforce.
CBS News
June 5, 2020
Elise Gould, senior economist at the nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute, said the upswing was likely due to most states lifting stay-at-home orders.
“While these are welcome gains (as long as the health consequences aren’t offsetting), jobs losses since February still total 19.6 million, and are currently 13% below its February level,” she wrote. (Parentheses in original.)
She cautioned that the “economic pain will be long-standing” without further relief to workers, families and state and local governments.
“Even with the mild improvement in May, the unemployment rate of all groups is still higher than the highest level the overall unemployment rate hit at the height of the Great Recession, when it reached 10.0% in 2009,” Gould said.
Courthouse News Service
June 5, 2020
According to a 2018 Economic Policy Institute report, “The share of African Americans in prison or jail almost tripled between 1968 and 2016 and is currently more than six times the white incarceration rate.”
90.3 WPLN News
June 5, 2020
The exact number is likely a little harder to get at. The Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz calculated that 37.2 million workers are either actually on unemployment benefits or applied very recently. That figure is based on the number of people DOL reported who are seeking another week of claims (and thus made it through the first round of processing) and also counts workers seeking aid under the temporary Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which includes people not typically eligible for unemployment benefits, like gig workers. “Together, that is close to one in four people in the U.S. workforce,” Shierholz writes.
Politico
June 5, 2020
A report by the Economic Policy Institute noted that black workers are also more likely to be on the front lines of the economy, working essential jobs.
Yahoo Finance
June 5, 2020