NEW YORK (AP) – A year ago, Elvia Banuelos’s life was improving. The mother of two young children, 39, said she felt confident about a new managerial-level job at the US Census Bureau – she would earn money to supplement the child support she receives to keep her children healthy, happy and in daycare.
But when the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic Last March, forcing hundreds of millions of people to strictly block, Banuelos’ outlook changed. The new job did not work, child support payments stopped because of a job loss and she became a homemaker when the daycare centers closed.
“The only thing I could do was pay the rent, so everything else was difficult,” said Banuelos, from Orland, California.
Millions of Americans experienced a devastating number during the year-long coronavirus pandemic, from lost loved ones to lost jobs. More than 530,000 people died in the United States. These losses did not affect all Americans in the same way, with communities of color hit especially by the virus and the economic downturn.
New research from the Associated Press-NORC Public Affairs Research Center shows that, compared to white Americans, blacks and Hispanics are more likely to lose jobs and other income during the pandemic, and those who lost income are more likely found themselves in deep financial holes.
This is in addition to black and Hispanic Americans being more likely than white Americans to say that they are close to someone who died of COVID-19 and less likely to have received a vaccine.. The pandemic has killed blacks and Hispanic Americans at rates disproportionate to their population in the United States, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Banuelos, who identifies herself as Latina, said that the disparity in pandemic experiences between “the upper class and people who are in a more difficult situation” became stark for her early in the pandemic. Even after two rounds of direct federal stimulus checks, she felt she was further behind than wealthy Americans.
The relief “did not last that long,” said Banuelos.
Overall, 62% of Hispanic Americans and 54% of Black Americans lost some form of family income during the pandemic, including job losses, wage cuts, hourly cuts and unpaid leave, compared with 45% of white Americans.
For other racial and ethnic groups, including Asian Americans and Native Americans, sample sizes are too small to be analyzed in the AP-NORC survey.
Jeremy Shouse, a restaurant manager in North Carolina, saw his working hours greatly reduced during the early months of the pandemic, when the small business was forced to close. Shouse, a 33-year-old black man, said the restaurant has since reopened, but went from making more than $ 5,000 a day before the pandemic to just $ 200 a few days.
“A year later and things are still not the same,” said Shouse, adding that his wages have fallen by 20%.
About 6 out of 10 Hispanics and about half of black Americans say their families still face the impacts of the pandemic’s loss of income, compared with about 4 out of 10 white Americans. Black and Hispanic Americans also often say that the impact was important.
“We found that systemic racism plays a big role in this process,” said Rashawn Ray, a colleague in governance studies at the Brookings Institute who co-authored a recent report on racial disparities and the pandemic in Detroit. “I think what we will see when the dust settles is that the difference in racial wealth has actually widened.”
There have long been racial disparities in the way Americans experience economic crises and recessions. However, after a recovery from the Great Recession and at the very beginning of the Trump administration, the unemployment gap between black and white Americans has narrowed amid strong growth in employment and economic activity. But a recent analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that a difference that had dropped to just 3 percentage points rose to 5.4 percentage points last August, erasing some of the gains made during the recovery.
The AP-NORC survey also found that Hispanic Americans tend to think that it will take a long time to dig their way out of the financial hole. About half of Hispanics say they are still feeling the effects of the loss of income and that it will take them at least six months to recover financially. About a third of black Americans say the same, compared with about a quarter of white Americans.
Forty-one percent of Hispanic Americans say their current family income is lower than at the beginning of the pandemic, compared with 29% of blacks and 25% of whites.
And about 4 out of 10 black and Hispanic Americans were unable to pay a bill last month, compared with about 2 out of 10 white Americans.
For people of color, the trauma experienced due to economic turmoil has been exacerbated by immense personal losses. About 30% of black and Hispanic Americans say they have a close friend or relative who has died of coronavirus since last March, compared with 15% of white Americans.
Debra Fraser-Howze, founder of Choose Healthy Life, an initiative that works to address public health disparities through the Black Church, said she is confident in the black community’s ability to recover economically and clinically.
“The community’s emergency economic situation is bleak,” said Fraser-Howze, “and it’s going to get worse for a long time. But we are a community of survivors – we come from slavery and Jim Crow. We figured out how to stay alive. I believe and have faith that our community will return. “
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Swanson reported from Washington. Morrison, who reported from New York, and Stafford, who reported from Detroit, are members of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team.
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The AP-NORC survey of 1,434 adults was conducted from February 25 to March 1 using a sample taken from the AmeriSpeak Panel based on NORC probability, which was designed to be representative of the United States population. The sampling error margin for all respondents is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.