Asian American and Pacific Islander women who lost their jobs during the pandemic have the highest long term unemployment rates.
According to a UCLA report, almost half of AAPI women who were unemployed during the Coronavirus pandemic have been out of work for longer than six months.
National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) is now calling for action.
“Removing the barriers to active participation in the workforce, especially for immigrant women and communities of color, is crucial to ensuring that AAPI women have the autonomy to make critical decisions about if or when to become a parent and provide for our families so that we can truly thrive,” said NAPAWF in a brief.
“Long-term unemployment does not just affect our community financially, but also has far-reaching consequences which include robbing AAPI women of their agency to do what is best for themselves and their families.”
70% of adult Asians in America were born in another country and immigrant women had the largest unemployment rates of any group in the US between March 2020 and February 2021.
AAPI women also earn 85 cents for every dollar that their white male counterparts earn too.
“Aggregated data often hide the true experiences of certain ethnicities and perpetuate the ‘model minority’ myth,” said NAPAWF in the brief.
“For too long, our struggles have been erased by averages that do not accurately reflect our realities. The AAPI community is a vast and incredibly diverse group encompassing more than 50 ethnic subgroups speaking more than 100 languages and dialects. There may be critical differences in the rates of unemployment among different ethnicities, and lumping us all together not only fails to acknowledge that, it also erases many of our distinct economic issues that need to be addressed.”
AAPI women are also overrepresented in the front line and low-wage workforces, which were disproportionately hit by the pandemic.
In other news, a 16-year-old student has graduated from the University of Toronto.
