NYC Asians facing record job losses

Asian Americans once had the best employment rates among the US ethnic groups but the coronavirus changed all that.  Asian American workers have gone from having the lowest unemployment rate in the country to one of the highest.

For Asian Americans in New York City, job losses are soaring because soared of the pandemic, according to a new study by the Asian American Federation. While the AAF study focuses on NYC, the same trend is occurring in other cities where Asian Americans are concentrated.

A year ago, the national jobless rate for Asian Americans was 2.8% — lower than that of whites, Blacks or Latinos, according to NPR. But Asian American unemployment soared to 15% in May, and it was still 10.7% in August — well above the rate of 7.3% for whites and the Latino rate of 10.5%. Only African Americans had a higher jobless rate of 13%.

Part of the reason is that many Asians work in jobs where working from home is impossible. They have to go to their places of employment in apparel manufacturing, laundry services, beauty, nail salons and food services, where about 20% of the Asian workforce is employed.

Another factor for the surge of unemployment is that before the coronavirus, unemployed Asian Americans were reluctant to apply for unemployment benefits. As the virus continued and restaurants and small businesses began to fold or cut back on workers, Asian Americans who had lost their jobs were forced to swallow their cultural hesitancy and seek government assistance, according to Howard Shih, one of the study’s authors.

“But once we saw COVID hit, the calculus was no longer, ‘Do I take benefits or do I maintain my immigration status opportunities?’” Shih told Spectrum News. “It became, ‘Do I take benefits or do I go hungry?’”

“People were really desperate to the point where they were willing to change how they viewed benefits,” Shih says. “Families were in dire straits.”

The study also broke down data to determine the impact of COVID-19 on each Asian American ethnic group.

The survey found, for instance, around 20% of all Bangladeshi workers in New York City are employed in the food service industry, where jobs fell by 72.5% in April. And one in three Filipino Americans were employed in the healthcare industry, putting them more at risk for COVID-19 exposure.

The study shows that the contrary to the model minority stereotype, Asian Americans need government assistance as much as other ethnic groups and are more willing to avail of those services if translation services are provided and culturally appropriate outreach is used.

"Asian Americans are absolutely overlooked," said Marlene Kim, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. "People have the sense that Asians are fine. That they're a model minority. That they have good jobs and are doing OK."

Additionally, the study suggests that there is a need to open up more job opportunities for low-income Asian Americans beyond the industries in which they are currently concentrated.