Unemployment rates among Asian Americans have increased 450% during the Coronavirus pandemic.
A report published by McKinsey & Co highlighted the data, which showed the increase from February to June 2020.
Throughout the pandemic, Asian Americans went from having one of the lowest unemployment rates to one of the highest.
White Americans have a current unemployment rate of 7%, whereas the rate among Asian Americans is 8.9%.
Mental health issues have also risen 39% among Asian Americans.
McKinsey & Co. Partner Emily Yueh added, “when you juxtapose that next to just, frankly, the things that we actually see happening in the front lines, the high percentage of Asian-Americans who risk their lives every day to be in the front lines serving their communities, it’s actually a complete stark and contradiction.”
Yueh also highlighted how broad ‘Asian-Americans’ are as a demographic group.
“It’s actually crazy when you think about, when we say Asian-Americans, it’s not a monolith, right?” She said. “There’s actually a huge diaspora of people.”
In terms of the causes of unemployment, Yuen points towards racism.
“It’s very difficult to link xenophobia directly to the unemployment,” she said. “But we do see that there has been a rise in targeted, you know, discrimination against Asians.”
“And the impact of this is really that, you know, over a third of Americans have been observing and witness individuals blaming Asian-Americans for the outbreak,” she continued.
“This is preposterous when you think about the size of the Asian-American community.”
In other news, Congresswoman Grace Meng has received a flurry of racist voicemails after sponsoring a resolution that condemned anti-Asian Coronavirus racism.
