(iStock)
In the five years before the COVID-19 pandemic, low-income Californians had begun to see substantial wage gains that were slowly chipping away at the long-growing income inequality gap between the state's haves and have-nots. But the coronavirus pandemic is “likely stripping away many of these gains,” according to a new report from the Public Policy Institute of California.
The current coronavirus-induced recession has hit low-income workers the hardest, while higher-income workers, largely able to work from home, have escaped relatively unscathed. And the extent of the job losses among low-wage workers — particularly African Americans, Latinos, workers without college degrees and women — has remained worryingly high through the fall, researchers found.