Black and Latino workers have the lowest working-from-home rates

See For African-Americans, a Painful Economic Reversal of Fortune: Fallout from pandemic and protests highlights income and wealth gaps that leave black Americans vulnerable by Greg Ip of The WSJ.

"Between 2011 and February, the black unemployment rate fell from 16% to 5.8%, near the lowest since records began in the early 1970s. That was still roughly double the white rate. But a more comprehensive measure, the share of working-age people who are employed, showed even more significant improvement: It reached 59% in February for black Americans, less than 2 percentage points below that of whites—near the narrowest such gap since at least 1972. Wage gains for black Americans had also started to accelerate.

Still, differences in income and wealth barely changed. In 2018, median black household incomes, adjusted for inflation, were still 5% lower than in 2000, whereas white household incomes were 6% higher. While black wages began to accelerate in 2015, the gap with white wages didn’t narrow.

While all racial groups saw their wealth devastated by the 2008 financial crisis, blacks’ has been much slower to recover. In 2016, the median black household had $18,000 in net worth, compared with $171,000 for whites."

"“Black and Latino workers have the lowest working-from-home rates and are more likely to work in industries considered essential. Inequality is a comorbidity in the Covid-19 pandemic,” she said."

"Because they have fewer assets such as cash to fall back on, black families usually have to cut spending much more than white families when faced with such an income shock, said Damon Jones, an economist at the University of Chicago."

"But Vanderbilt University economist William Collins, one of its authors, says that is probably not the template for today. Many black Americans have moved to the suburbs, and cities’ economic bases are stronger than in the 1960s, when they were deindustrializing. In fact, many have gained jobs and population in recent years. Most of the damage in the past week has been in retail and office districts, whereas black neighborhoods bore most of the destruction in the 1960s."