Almost 70% of Black workers in Southern California who lost their jobs said they were still looking for work a year after the start of the pandemic

• A new survey of nearly 2,000 Black workers in Southern California shows just how uneven recovery is.
• Most Black workers who lost work were still looking for jobs a year after the start of the pandemic.
• Workers said that they needed targeted recovery measures like paid leave and development training.

The pandemic caused economic turmoil for millions of Americans. Many were suddenly jobless; others were thrust into danger as they were deemed “essential” while others could work from their homes.

It also exposed the fault lines of inequality that were quietly simmering underneath the economy: Lower-income people and people of color disproportionately lost pay, faced higher exposure to COVID-19, and were more likely to die from the virus. At the same time, America’s billionaires added $1 trillion to their cumulative wealth in 2021.

Over a year after the start of the pandemic, there were plenty of job openings available in the summer of 2021. The US reached a record-high job openings level in July, and workers were also quitting in droves to seek out better opportunities. The US also continued to add jobs in the summer as it continued its recovery back to pre-pandemic levels. 

But a new report from UCLA Labor Center’s Center for the Advancement of Racial Equity at Work (CARE at Work), provides a snapshot at how Black workers have been left behind in that recovery as of the summer of 2021. 

The vast majority of Black workers who lost their jobs said they were still looking for work a year after the start of the pandemic (68%), even as employers across the country complained that they couldn’t find anyone amidst persistent labor shortages.

That’s according to the CARE at Work survey of nearly 2,000 Black workers in Southern California about their experience during the pandemic. The survey was conducted from May 2021 to July 2021. 

“Black workers in times of crisis, in times of economic recessions and downturns, are oftentimes the first to be let go from work, and then the last to be hired back,” Déjà Thomas, the report’s lead author and CARE at Work program manager, told Insider. 

While the economy seems to be booming on the surface, there’s still a “Black jobs crisis,” according to the report — and to start to address it, the workers surveyed say that they need long-term quality jobs and targeted recovery.

Black workers are more unemployed — and many who reported being discriminated against lost their jobs

The pandemic has been tough for Black Americans looking for jobs. The unemployment rate of Black Americans stands higher than that of their peers as of the beginning of the year. This was also the experience of Black Americans before the pandemic, as seen in the following chart:

The unemployment rate for Black men has historically been higher than for white men, and the unemployment rate for Black men also has tended to be higher than the rate for Black women.

Discrimination is one reason why the Black unemployment rate has been higher than the white unemployment rate, according to the Center for American Progress.

In addition to discrimination Black workers may face finding a job, some employees say they deal with discrimination in the workplace. And 28% of Black workers in the UCLA survey said that they've dealt with prejudice or discrimination at work. Of the workers who said they had experienced prejudice or discrimination, 45% were laid-off or terminated.

"When you're in times of a recession where you're a little nervous, Black workers' jobs tend to get a little bit more precarious. That's the systemic racism arm of the Black jobs crisis — of implicit and explicit bias of devaluing the work of black folks," Thomas said. "Whether folks are doing it intentionally or not, it's still happening."

The need for targeted relief and care infrastructure

"The thing around the recovery from COVID that always gets me, is like, we can recover," Thomas said. "We can get back to where we were January 2020, but Black workers still weren't doing well."

Workers said in the UCLA survey that legislation like paid leave and funding for childcare would help support them, among other long-term economic supports. 

During the pandemic, school and daycare closures around the US meant working parents had to figure out how to manage added childcare duties and their jobs, with some even temporarily leaving the workforce. The impact of closures and extra caregiving duties fell especially hard on women.

Of the Black women surveyed, 90% said they saw an increase in responsibilities at home. 

Black workers also said that targeted wellness programming — like shorter workweeks — could help support them, along with training on both skills and rights at work.

"Quality jobs, COVID recovery targeted to Black workers is what folks are saying," Thomas said. "And that might be complicated. That might be difficult. It might be a long process, but it's what we need."