Dear Bay Area Equity Atlas Users:

January 11, 2021

Dear Bay Area Equity Atlas Users:

Happy New Year from the Bay Area Equity Atlas team! This has been a year of tremendous economic and social turmoil for our region and the nation. The Covid-19 pandemic and the outcry against police brutality and systemic racism following the murder of George Floyd pushed structural racism to the forefront of public consciousness and elevated equity in local policy debates. Throughout 2020, we worked to equip advocates and the public with relevant, deeply disaggregated local data to inform policy and systems changes to advance racial equity.

Covid-19 Dashboard, Frontline Workers Analysis Reveal Pandemic’s Impact on Communities of Color

To track the community-level impact of the pandemic, we launched a daily-updated dashboard in December that provides ZIP code-level data on total Covid cases from the four Bay Area counties that publish such detailed geographic data. The dashboard reveals how neighborhoods with large Latinx and Black populations have been hardest hit and can be used to inform targeted relief and recovery strategies. We also analyzed the Bay Area’s 1.1 million-strong essential workforce and found that Black, Filipinx, women of color, and immigrant workers are disproportionately represented in essential industries and vulnerable to economic and health risks.

 

Partnering with Bay Area Organizers to Assess Eviction Risk, Support Tenant Protections

We produced county-level fact sheets estimating the number of renter households at risk of eviction in the midst of the current economic crisis. Our Contra Costa county factsheet, produced in July in partnership with the Raise the Roof Coalition, found that nearly 22,000 households were at risk of eviction, and helped to secure an extension of the county’s eviction moratorium from July to September. We produced similar resources for San Mateo and Sonoma counties in partnership with the People’s Alliance of San Mateo County and the North Bay Organizing Project, we as well as for the state of California (with the Housing Now! coalition). Find them here.

Tracking Racial Equity in Political Representation, Police Use of Force, and Income

In February, we analyzed the latest data on the race and gender of top local elected officials and found that while the region is making progress on political representation, people of color — especially the Latinx and Asian or Pacific Islander communities — remain underrepresented in elected office. We also reviewed the use of force indicator in the Atlas and found that Black residents are disproportionately the victims of police violence. Of the nearly 200 incidents in 2016 and 2017, one-fifth involved Black people even though they make up just 6 percent of the region’s population. We also analyzed the typical income classifications used to inform housing policy (e.g. 50 and 80 percent of Area Median Income) and found that nearly half of all residents are considered low income. Black and Latino residents are overrepresented in very-low-income households while White residents are overrepresented among high-income households.

Democratizing Equity Data in the Region

We continued to share the Atlas resource with community leaders across the region, albeit virtually, including presenting our data with the Oakland Department of Violence Prevention and the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative, and hosting community trainings with the All-in Alameda County initiative, Boston Private Bank in San Francisco, and the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits.

Atlas in the News

Our data and reports have been covered by media outlets including the San Francisco Chronicle, SFGate, Mercury News, Palo Alto Online, East Bay Times, Patch, San Francisco Business Times, Tableau, and more.

We have big plans for 2021, including new analyses, tools, and partnerships, so stay tuned. Thank you for your continued interest in our work!

The Bay Area Equity Atlas team

Data on unemployment filings in California reveals how the Black working class has been hardest hit by the Covid recession, underscoring the need for targeted, race-conscious recovery strategies. 

By Eliza McCullough

While the economic crisis has affected a startling number of workers, workers of color and low-wage workers have been hit the hardest. In California, 8.7 million workers (nearly 45 percent of the labor force) have filed for unemployment insurance (UI) since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. But job displacement has varied dramatically by race and education, as illustrated by the  California Policy Lab’s recent analysis of UI claims data. This post highlights how California’s Black workers are experiencing disproportionate unemployment in the Covid recession due to structural racism embedded in the labor market, and describes policy priorities to ensure an equitable recovery.

About 85 percent of California’s Black workforce has filed for unemployment at some point since March 15th, which is more than double the rate for White, Latinx, and Asian or Pacific Islander workers. This includes workers who filed for either regular UI or Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), a program created by the CARES Act to extend benefits to workers not usually eligible for regular UI.* 

This unemployment crisis for Black workers in a time of economic contraction threatens to increase already-wide racial inequities in employment. Structural racism embedded in the US labor market has created barriers to employment for Black workers that predate the current recession, ranging from employer bias and discrimination to residential segregation and mass incarceration. Black workers are typically the group hardest hit by economic downturns and are often the last to recover, as evidenced during the Great Recession when Black workers disproportionately suffered from long-term unemployment. The current economic crisis has most negatively impacted the hospitality, retail, and tourism sectors, industries in which Black workers are concentrated due in large part to discriminatory public policies that restricted Black workers’ access to better-paying jobs in other industries (a phenomenon known as “occupational segregation”). As these service sectors have gone through massive lay-offs, Black employees have been subject to the “last hired, first fired” phenomenon in which low-wage positions are the first to be eliminated.

Further disaggregating the data by race and educational attainment, we see that racial inequities are particularly extreme among workers without four-year degrees. Workers of all races with lower education levels have been hardest hit by the Covid recession: More than half of California workers with a high school degree or less (who account for 38 percent of all workers in the state) have filed for unemployment since March 2020 compared to 13 percent of workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher. But unemployment filings are particularly high for Black workers without post-secondary education: virtually all Black workers with a high school degree or less (99 percent) have filed for unemployment, along with 75 percent of Asian or Pacific Islander workers with this level of education, compared with 52 percent of White workers and 33 percent of Latinx workers.

Black workers are overrepresented in lower education groups due to deep-seated structures of racial exclusion which have created significant barriers to accessing higher education. Residential segregation, perpetuated by exclusionary zoning, has led to the concentration of low-income Black children in schools with inadequate resources, which researchers have found is the key driver of the educational achievement gap. Along with the rising costs of college, these barriers prevent many Black students from accessing post-secondary education. As middle-wage jobs have shrunk in recent decades, Black workers with no higher education have been pushed into low-wage, ‘flexible’ positions with minimal protections. These jobs have been most impacted by wage cuts, diminished hours, and layoffs during the current economic crisis. 

Toward an Equitable Economic Recovery

Black workers and other workers of color are in dire need of increased supports in California and nationwide. Policymakers and business leaders must take action to address immediate economic needs as we enter the eleventh month of the pandemic. At the same time, they must launch forward-thinking, race-conscious strategies that lay the foundation for an equitable recovery and future economy. We recommend the following:

1. Continue expanded UI benefits and provide direct cash support. Additional UI payments under the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program should be increased back to $600/week (as provided from March to July). Additional and ongoing direct payments, such as the one-time $1,200 payments included in the CARES Act, could also provide a lifeline to unemployed workers and Black workers who are less likely to have adequate savings to fall back on.

2. Prevent evictions and foreclosures and provide debt relief to Covid-impacted households. As unemployed workers are more likely to be behind on rent and California’s Black renters are already paying unaffordable rent, policymakers must extend eviction moratoriums and provide rent debt relief. Limited rental assistance funds should be targeted to the hardest-hit households, particularly those in predominantly Black neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color, to prevent displacement and homelessness.  

3. Protect existing jobs. Multiple cities have passed legislation to ensure that laid-off workers in low-wage sectors can return to their former jobs. For example, Oakland’s Right to Recall policy requires employers in hospitality and travel to give laid-off workers priority when operations resume. Similar policies that protect jobs across sectors should also be implemented at the state and federal levels to ensure low-wage workers do not suffer from long-term joblessness or decreases in income and benefits. 

4. Build worker power. Unions have been shown to reduce racial inequality and provide economic security for Black workers. California policymakers must repeal Prop 22, which misclassifies app-based drivers as independent contractors and prevents their access to basic labor protections. Legislation that empowers workers, such as AB3075 which holds employers more accountable for wage theft, should be strengthened and expanded to ensure that recessions are less catastrophic for low-wage workers. Finally, California must increase funding for enforcement of labor and employment laws while also making state financial support for businesses conditional based on compliance with those laws.

5. Create high-quality public jobs accessible to unemployed workers. A Federal Job Guarantee would ensure everyone has access to living-wage jobs while meeting the physical and care infrastructure needs of disinvested communities. Policymakers should take immediate steps to support unemployed workers through direct job creation in crucial sectors, like the Public Health Jobs Corp program proposed by President-elect Biden. 

6. Expand access to upskilling opportunities and stable career pathways. Policymakers should proactively connect unemployed workers to good jobs by investing in workforce development, including higher education and training programs that reach Black workers, and enacting community workforce agreements on state-funded projects. Programs such as California’s Breaking Barriers to Employment Initiative, which funds workforce development programs for those with barriers to employment, should be strengthened and expanded while business leaders should commit to advancing equitable employment practices and offering good job opportunities to workers hard-hit by the pandemic.
   

    

*The California Employment Development Department defines workforce as all individuals residing in California who worked at least one hour per month for a wage or salary, were self-employed, or worked at least 15 unpaid hours per month in a family business. Those who were on vacation or on other kinds of leave were also included.