It appears that COVID-19 exacerbated racial discrepancies in Missouri unemployment. Data from the Missouri Department of Labor suggests that the pandemic caused Black people and Asian people to, on average, represent a higher percentage of those on unemployment than they did before April of 2020. 

Missouri does not track unemployed rates by race; however, it does track the demographics of those who are on unemployment benefits. 

Those negatively affected most by unemployment discrepancies are Black people, even before COVID-19. According to the 2020 Census, Black people make up 11.80% of Missourians. However, the average monthly amount of Black people who were unemployed from January 2019 to March 2020 was 18.8%. Since the onset of the pandemic, this average currently sits at 23.3%, an almost twofold overrepresentation. 

Those who identify as a Hawaiian Native or other Pacific Islander are also overrepresented, however, their average representation remained relatively consistent pre-lockdown and post-lockdown. 

Asian people, on the other hand, were and still are underrepresented. Making up 2.2% of Missouri’s population, they represented, on average, .75% of those receiving unemployment benefits. However, in the 9 months following the pandemic, this proportion almost doubled and, since COVID’s onset, they represent an average of just about 1% of unemployment recipients, indicating that the pandemic may have disproportionately affected them as well. 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the reason the pandemic caused unemployment to rise was because it “and efforts to contain it led businesses to suspend operations or close, resulting in a record number of temporary layoffs.” 

African Americans being disproportionately unemployed is a trend that is mirrored at the national level. According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the Black unemployment rate is consistently double the White unemployment rate. 

As to why there are racial disparities in unemployment, a report from the Center for American Progress said that “African Americans have long been excluded from opportunities for upward mobility, stuck instead in low-wage occupations that do not offer the protections of labor laws.” This racial exclusion, as well educational and geographical disparities noted in a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, could be part of the reason why African Americans seemed to have faced the brunt of pandemic-fueled unemployment. 

Data from the Missouri Department of Labor also shows that women made up more of a percentage of unemployment beneficiaries following the pandemic. In the months before COVID-19 lockdowns, women represented an average of 42.6% of people on unemployment. In the months following lockdowns, that number rose to 46% and since the pandemic, the average is at 47.3% as of October. 

The nationwide numbers mirror this trend. While women and men had relatively similar levels of unemployment for years prior to the pandemic, women experienced 16.1% unemployment April 2020 while men experienced 13.5%. From April to July, the average unemployment rate for women was 13.2% and for men it was 11.5%. 

The International Labour Organization suggests that, generally, women “tend to work in low-quality jobs in vulnerable conditions, and there is little improvement forecast in the near future,” and have decreased job security in normal conditions. A report from the Brookings Institution indicated that these factors are exacerbated by the pandemic, saying “COVID-19 is hard on women because the U.S. economy is hard on women, and this virus excels at taking existing tensions and ratcheting them up.”