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Updated charts still to come, but bottom line from August @BLS_gov data: #AsianWomen continue to suffer the largest increase in #unemployment of *all* race/gender categories; the rate was 3.0% in Feb, peaked in *May* at 16.6% (+13.6), latest reading from August at 11.5% (+8.5)...
New note to this table: #PandemicUnemployment peaked in April for most groups, except it peaked in *May* for All Black (16.6%), Black Women (17.2%), All Asian (14.8%), Asian Women (16.6%), and Asian Men (13.2%). (Keep reading...)
Some perspective on how unusual this #PandemicRecession has been by race/gender: the #AsianFemale #unemployment rate in February was LESS THAN HALF the rate for all Blacks (3.0 vs. 6.3). In May, the rate for Asian women was *exactly* the SAME as for Blacks (16.6%)...
During the Great Recession, the #unemployment rate for Asian women only got up to 8.4% at its WORST. For Blacks overall it got up to 17.3%. Asians (both men and women) are the only groups still facing higher unemployment *NOW* than at *any* time in prior recession...
So what gives??? A confluence of different factors, from the (mostly human-intensive) industries and types of (mostly small) businesses that Asians work for, to the high-intensity #Shecession factors (traditional gender roles) affecting Asian women more than other women...
Too much to tease out of existing data that are collected. (Remember, BLS does not even publish Asian women separated from Asian men in the employment report.) So much that needs to be studied by first gathering more data, one person at a time...
The analysis of #AsianWomen in the economy should not be something only Asian women care about! It tells us a lot about everyone else in the economy who shares one or more characteristics with Asian women, that Asian women simply have *more* of...
Maybe you're a highly-educated working mother (but not Asian). Maybe you're someone who works for small, family-owned businesses (but not Asian). Maybe you live and work in major metropolitan areas (but are not Asian). Maybe you work a lot around people (but are not Asian)...
We can learn a lot about how our whole economy works by studying more closely how it works for certain smaller groups of people. Looking at the aggregate/overall data just fuzzes up everything that's really going on. So even if you don't care to look closely at Asian people...
btw here's the blog post from last month with the story and charts I'll be updating by later today or this weekend... I do this work on my own w/ help from a friend @kimcheesquat and son's gf, as I'm still an #unemployed #AsianWoman https://economistmom.com/2020/08/19/seeing-asian-women-to-better-understand-the-pandemic-she-cession/
And here's a new bar chart -- this updated one doesn't just move the end date to August, I also changed the first set of #PandemicRecession #unemployment change to go from Feb to worst month (which was April for most, but for Black women and Asians was May).
