Coronavirus Wipes Away Recent Wage Gains For Many California Workers, Report Finds Sunday, December 20, 2020 | Sacramento, CA
In this Nov. 19, 2020, file photo, Fabian Rodriguez cleans a table in an outdoor tented dining area of Tequila Museo Mayahuel restaurant, in Sacramento, Calif. Sales at restaurants and bars fell in October for the first time in six months.
AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File
By Jackie Botts, CalMatters
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In the five years before the pandemic, low-income Californians had begun to see substantial wage gains, chipping away at the income inequality gap between California’s haves and have-nots that has widened over the past 40 years. But the coronavirus pandemic is “likely stripping away many of these gains,” researchers at the Public Policy Institute of California found in a new report.
In summary
New research finds the pandemic has likely stripped away most of the wage gains made after the Great Recession by California’s lowest earners. State Democrats and Republicans are proposing various solutions, but experts warn jobs alone will not bridge growing inequality.
Lea este artículo en español.
In the five years before the pandemic, low-income Californians had begun to see substantial wage gains, chipping away at the income inequality gap between California’s haves and have-nots that has widened over the past 40 years. But the coronavirus pandemic is “likely stripping away many of these gains,” researchers at the Public Policy Institute of California found in a new report.
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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.