NEW YORK (AP) – A year ago, Elvia Banuelos ’life was looking up. The 39-year-old mother of 39 said she was confident in a new job at the U.S. Census Bureau: she would earn money to supplement the child support she received to keep her children healthy, happy and the nursery. .
But when the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic last March, forcing hundreds of millions of people to close strictly, Banuelos ’outlook changed. The new job ended, child support payments were stopped due to job loss and she became a stay-at-home mom when the days closed.
“All I could do was make the rent, so everything else was hard,” said Banuelos, of Orland, California.
Millions of Americans have experienced a devastating toll during the year-round coronavirus pandemic, from lost loved ones to lost jobs. More than 530,000 people have died in the United States. These losses have not affected all Americans equally, with communities of color especially affected 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 have experienced job losses and other income during the pandemic. , and those who have lost income are more likely to have found themselves in deep financial holes.
In addition, black and Hispanic Americans are more likely than white Americans to say they are close to someone who has died of COVID-19 and are less likely to have received a vaccine.. The pandemic has killed black Americans and Hispanics at rates disproportionate to their population in the U.S., according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Banuelos, who identifies himself as Latin, said the disparity in pandemic experiences between “the upper class and people in a tighter situation” was made clear to him at the beginning of the pandemic. Even after two rounds of federal direct stimulus checks, he felt he was lagging behind wealthy Americans.
The relief “didn’t last that long,” Banuelos said.
Overall, 62% of Hispanic Americans and 54% of black Americans have lost some form of household income during the pandemic, including job losses, wage cuts, hourly cuts, and non-work permits. paid, compared to 45% of white Americans.
For other ethnic and racial groups, including Asian Americans and Native Americans, sample sizes are too small to analyze in the AP-NORC survey.
Jeremy Shouse, a North Carolina restaurant manager, saw his schedule reduced during the early months of the pandemic when he was forced to close the small business. Shouse, a 33-year-old black man, said the restaurant has reopened since then, but that it went from earning more than $ 5,000 internal a day before the pandemic to just $ 200 a few days.
“A year later and things are still not the same,” said Shouse, who added that their salaries have dropped by 20%.
About 6 in 10 Hispanics and about half of black Americans say their homes still face the impacts of the pandemic loss of income, compared to about 4 in ten white Americans. Black and Hispanic Americans are also especially prone to say the impact has been significant.
“We find that systemic racism plays a huge role in this process,” said Rashawn Ray, a fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institute, who co-authored a recent report on racial disparities and the pandemic in Detroit. “I think what we’ll see once the dust has settled is that the racial wealth gap has widened.”
There have long been racial disparities in the way Americans experience recessions and economic recessions. However, after the recovery from the Great Recession and even the Trump administration, the unemployment gap between black and white Americans narrowed amid strong employment and employment growth. economic activity. But a recent analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found a gap that had narrowed to 3 percentage points to 5.4 percentage points last August, erasing some of the gains made during the recovery.
The AP-NORC poll also finds that Hispanic Americans especially 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 the loss of income and that 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 Hispanics say their current family income is lower than at the start of the pandemic, compared to 29% of black Americans and 25% of white Americans.
And about 4 out of ten black and Hispanic Americans have been unable to pay a bill in the last month, compared to about 2 out of ten white Americans.
For people of color, the trauma experienced due to the economic turmoil has been exacerbated by immense personal losses. About 30% of black Americans and Hispanics claim to have a close friend or family member who has died of coronavirus since last March, compared to 15% of white Americans.
Debra Fraser-Howze, founder of Choose Healthy Life, an initiative that works to address public health disparities across the black church, said she is confident in the black community’s ability to recover financially and medically.
“The community’s emergency economic situation is sad,” Fraser-Howze said, “and it will be worse for a long time. But we are a community of survivors: we came through slavery and Jim Crow. We discovered 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 NORC-based AmeriSpeak panel of probabilities, which is designed to be representative of the American population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is approximately 3.4 percentage points.