Over 200,000 Black and Latina women have disappeared from the workforce since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a new survey on workplace inequity from Hue and The Harris Poll.
Many of these women have stopped looking for new jobs, making them invisible to unemployment statistics and ineligible for federal benefits. The Hue data complicates the statistics released last week by the Labor Department, which reported an unemployment rate of 3.4%—a 50-year low.
The survey also illuminates wide disparities along racial lines in the post-pandemic labor market. These variations in workplace opportunity, compensation, and experience have significant implications for how economy-wide trends like inflation and downsizing are impacting BIPOC employees, as compared to their white coworkers.
For many of the survey’s nearly 3,000 respondents, the pandemic is not a thing of the past: 15% of unemployed Black workers have suspended their job search because of health issues connected to long COVID.
Moreover, two years after the surge in corporate DEI action triggered by Black Lives Matter protests, initiatives are faltering: 84% of BIPOC employees said they’d seen no continued acknowledgment of racial discrimination in the workplace since June 2020. That’s in stark contrast to 91% of HR departments surveyed, which told Hue that their racial equity initiatives had been “highly effective.”
Companies across sectors have focused on surface-level fixes rather than investing in structural solutions that would create sustainable racial equity—namely, recruiting and promoting a diverse workforce, the report found.
Representation matters to BIPOC workers: 3 in 5 respondents reported that they’re uncomfortable working for a company that doesn’t have racially diverse leadership. In the absence of advancement opportunities, BIPOC employees are redirecting their careers at much higher rates than their white coworkers, which in turn exacerbates their vulnerability to layoffs.
The report also found that BIPOC workers are three times more likely to face financial hardship because of their race. Black women, in particular, are twice as likely to be underpaid for their work as compared to their white male counterparts. 50% of survey respondents said that they would need to take a second job if the economy continues to slide into a recession.
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