Ong Highlights Economic Obstacles Facing Asian Americans

This past Wednesday, CNK research was cited in a USA Today article about economic hardships among Asian Americans in the United States. Many hotels, restaurants, shopping centers and beauty salons were forced to close at the beginning of the pandemic, and a report by Ong found that Asian Americans accounted for one in four workers within those sectors.

Now, long-term unemployment levels among Asian Americans have been exacerbated by a surge in anti-Asian sentiment. Among all racial and ethnic groups in the United States, Asians have the largest income gap between the top and bottom 10%, and this trend has been accelerated by the economic shutdown caused by the pandemic.

“These industries have been very slow to recover,” said Mar, the study’s co-author alongside CNK Director Paul Ong. “Asian Americans are also concentrated in a small number of states, and some of these states implemented shelter-in-place restrictions ahead of the rest of the nation. So Asian Americans were more likely to be unemployed sooner during the pandemic.”

Read the full article here: ‘Invisibilized’: Asian Americans lead in long-term unemployment amid COVID-19 pandemic and hate attacks