A job fair in New York, Nov. 6, 2009.
A new survey reports that millions of unemployed Americans have been out of work for months during the Communist pneumonia Epidemic, and among the long-term unemployed, Asian-Americans have been particularly hard hit.
As of February, 41.5 percent of unemployed workers had been out of work for more than six months, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center, an independent U.S. pollster. There are 4.1 million Americans who are long-term unemployed and have been without a job since at least last August, accounting for about 2.6 percent of the workforce.
The report comes a year after the Communist virus (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic and massive economic shutdowns occurred across the United States. The current sharp rise in long-term unemployment can be compared to the Great Recession of 2007-09. The long-term unemployment rate reached the same heights during the two years of the Great Recession.
Among unemployed Asian-Americans, the long-term unemployment rate has risen sharply. According to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. government data, Asian Americans saw the sharpest increase in long-term unemployment between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the fourth quarter of 2020, climbing by 25 percentage points. By the end of 2020, about 46 percent of unemployed Asian Americans have been out of work for more than six months.
The black unemployed have the second-highest long-term unemployment rate, with 38 percent unemployed by the end of 2020. This is followed by Whites and Latinos at 35 percent and 34 percent, respectively. For these three groups of unemployed workers, the long-term unemployment rate is about 15 percentage points higher than it was a year ago.
The report said it is not entirely clear what is causing the relatively high long-term unemployment rate among Asian Americans, but noted that part of the reason may be that Asians tend to live in the states most affected by economic stagnation.
“In 2019, nearly one-third of Asian Americans (31 percent) live in California, the state that experienced the longest shutdown and the worst epidemic in 2020,” the report said, adding that “the state with the second-largest share of Asians (9 percent) is New York, which since the start of the epidemic has The state with the second-largest Asian population (9 percent) is New York, which has suffered the third-largest job loss in the nation since the outbreak began.
An analysis released last August by global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. also noted that the unemployment rate for Asian Americans rose more than 450 percent between February and June of last year, outpacing increases for other groups.
Previous studies have suggested that this is partly due to the concentration of Asians in jobs heavily impacted by the epidemic. According to a report published last July by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), nearly one in four working Asian-Americans work in hospitality and service industries such as leisure, retail or personal care. “A report by McKinsey & Company also shows that about 1 in 4 businesses in the Food and lodging services industry are Asian-owned.
Many Asian Americans may not be aware of or have access to resources such as unemployment insurance and epidemic assistance due to factors such as language barriers and concerns about immigration status.
The report also shows that unemployed Asian men are more likely to be long-term unemployed than women.
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