NEW YORK (AP) – A year ago, Elvia Banuelos’ life was looking up. The 39-year-old mother of two young children said she was confident about a new leadership-level job at the U.S. Census Bureau – she would earn money to supplement the child support she receives to -Keep your children healthy, happy and in day care.
But when the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic In March last year, forcing hundreds of millions of people to stand firm, Banuelos’ prospects changed. The new job has stopped, child support payments have stopped due to job loss, and she has become a stay-at-home mom when day care is closed.
“The only thing I could do was rent my house, so anything else was difficult,” said Banuelos of Orland, California.
Millions of Americans suffer devastating tax during coronavirus pandemic throughout the year, from lost loved ones to lost jobs. More than 530,000 people died in the United States. These losses did not affect all Americans equally, as communities of color were particularly hard hit by both the virus and the economic consequences.
A new survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that compared to white Americans, black and Hispanic Americans are more likely to suffer job losses and other income during the pandemic, and those who lost income are more likely to be found in deep financial holes.
In addition, black and Hispanic Americans are more likely than white Americans to say they are close to someone who died of COVID-19 and are less likely to have been vaccinated.. The pandemic has killed blacks and Hispanics at a rate disproportionate to their U.S. population, according to the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Banuelos, who identifies himself as Latin, said the difference in pandemic experiences between “the upper class and people in a tighter situation” became clear to him at the beginning of the pandemic. Even after two rounds of direct stimulus federal controls, she felt she was lagging behind wealthy Americans.
The relief “didn’t last that long,” Banuelos said.
Overall, 62% of Hispanic Americans and 54% of black Americans lost some form of household income during the pandemic, including job losses, pay cuts, reduced hours, and unpaid leave, compared to 45% of white Americans.
For other racial and ethnic groups, including Asian Americans and Native Americans, the sample sizes are too small to be analyzed in the AP-NORC survey.
Jeremy Shouse, a restaurant manager in North Carolina, saw his hours greatly reduced in the first months of the pandemic, when the small business had to close. Shouse, a 33-year-old black man, said the restaurant has since reopened, but has gone from earning more than $ 5,000 a day before the pandemic to just $ 200 in a few days.
“A year later and things are still not the same,” Shouse said, adding that his salaries had dropped by 20%.
About 6 out of 10 Hispanics and about half of black Americans say their households still face the effects of the loss of income due to the pandemic, compared to about 4 out of 10 white Americans. Black and Hispanic Americans are also particularly likely to say the impact has been major.
“We find that systemic racism plays a huge role in this process,” said Rashawn Ray, a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institute who co-authored a recent report on racial disparities and the Detroit pandemic. “I think what we’ll see once the dust is gone is that the difference in racial wealth has actually increased.”
There have long been racial disparities in how Americans face recessions and economic downturns. However, following a recovery from the Great Recession and the entry into the Trump administration, the unemployment gap between black and white Americans has narrowed amid strong job growth and economic activity. But a recent analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that a gap of up to 3 percentage points rose to 5.4 percentage points in August last year, erasing some of the gains made during the recovery.
The AP-NORC poll also finds that Hispanic Americans are especially likely to believe it will take a long time to get out of the financial hole. About half of Hispanics say they still feel the effects of losing income and it will take at least six months to recover financially. About a third of black Americans say the same thing, compared to about a quarter of white Americans.
Forty-one percent of Hispanic Americans say their current household income is lower than it was at the beginning of the pandemic, compared to 29% of black Americans and 25% of white Americans.
And about 4 out of 10 black and Hispanic Americans have not been able to pay a bill in the last month, compared to about 2 out of 10 white Americans.
For people of color, the trauma suffered by the economic turmoil has been exacerbated by huge personal losses. About 30 percent of black and Hispanic Americans say they have a close friend or relative who died of the coronavirus in March last year, compared to 15 percent of white Americans.
Debra Fraser-Howze, founder of Choose a Healthy Life, an initiative that works to address public health disparities through the Black Church, said she is confident in the ability of the Black community to recover economically and medically.
“The community’s emergency economic situation is disastrous,” said Fraser-Howze, “and it will be worse for a long time. But we are a community of survivors – we came through slavery and Jim Crow. We figured out how to stay alive. I believe and trust 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 Race and Ethnicity team.
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The AP-NORC survey of 1,434 adults was conducted between February 25 and March 1 using a sample taken from the probability-based NORC AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the US population. The sampling error margin for all respondents is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.