 Toward a More Inclusive EconomySpeech from Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Abstract: It is clear that the adverse effects of the pandemic have not been evenly distributed. They have been borne by the most vulnerable in our economy: lower-income and minority workers and communities; those who do not have the opportunity to work from home; those who do not live in areas with reliable telecommunications and internet services or access to adequate healthcare; and the smaller of small businesses. Indeed, the results from a recent Fed survey show that between March and July, a larger percentage of low-income workers, less educated workers, and Black and Hispanic workers were laid off compared to higher-income, more educated, and white workers. Rehiring by employers has been slower for lower-income workers than for higher-income workers. In addition, from February to April, the number of active small business owners dropped by 3.3 million, a record 22 percent decline.3 Compared to small firms overall, Black-owned businesses have been twice as likely to close and Hispanic-owned businesses have been one-and-a-half times as likely to close. It is distressing to see the disparate impact of the pandemic, but the differences in economic outcomes did not start with COVID-19. There were already long-standing economic disparities in our economy. Keywords: diversity; economic inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedcsp:88794 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Speech from Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Contact information at EDIRC. |
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