Skip to content Skip to search

Republish This Story

* Please read before republishing *

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Creative Commons license as long as you follow our republishing guidelines, which require that you credit The 19th and retain our pixel. See our full guidelines for more information.

To republish, simply copy the HTML at right, which includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to The 19th. Have questions? Please email [email protected].

— The Editors

Loading...

Modal Gallery

/
Sign up for our newsletter

Menu

  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Latest Stories
  • Search
  • Upcoming Events
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletter
  • Donate
  • Work With Us
  • Fellowships
    • From the Collection

      Changing Child Care

      Illustration of a woman feeding a baby a bottle
      • 1 in 4 parents report being fired for work interruptions due to child care breakdowns

        Chabeli Carrazana · February 2
      • Washington, D.C., offers financial relief to local child care workers

        Orion Rummler · September 20
      • As climate change worsens hurricane season in Louisiana, doulas are ensuring parents can safely feed their babies

        Jessica Kutz · May 5
    • From the Collection

      Next-Gen GOP

      Illustration of a woman riding an elephant
      • Mayra Flores’ victory set a record for women in Congress. It also reflects the growing visibility of Republican Latinas

        Candice Norwood · June 21
      • A banner year for Republican women

        Amanda Becker · November 11
      • Republican women could double representation in the U.S. House

        Amanda Becker · November 4
    • From the Collection

      On The Rise

      Illustration of three women marching
      • Can Cheri Beasley build a winning coalition in North Carolina?

        Candice Norwood · October 11
      • Los Angeles has never elected a woman mayor. Karen Bass hopes to change that.

        Nadra Nittle · September 8
      • Judge J. Michelle Childs is confirmed to D.C. appeals court

        Candice Norwood · July 20
    • From the Collection

      Pandemic Within a Pandemic

      Illustration of four people marching for Black Lives Matter with coronavirus as the backdrop
      • Some LGBTQ+ people worry that the COVID-19 vaccine will affect HIV medication. It won’t.

        Orion Rummler · November 23
      • Why are more men dying from COVID? It’s a complicated story of nature vs. nurture, researchers say

        Mariel Padilla · September 22
      • Few incarcerated women were released during COVID. The ones who remain have struggled.

        Candice Norwood · August 17
    • From the Collection

      Portraits of a Pandemic

      Illustration of a woman wearing a mask and holding up the coronavirus
      • For family caregivers, COVID is a mental health crisis in the making

        Shefali Luthra · October 8
      • A new database tracks COVID-19’s effects on sex and gender

        Shefali Luthra · September 15
      • Pregnant in a pandemic: The 'perfect storm for a crisis'

        Shefali Luthra · August 25
    • From the Collection

      The 19th Explains

      People walking from many articles to one article where they can get the context they need on an issue.
      • The 19th Explains: What we know about Brittney Griner’s case and what it took to get her home

        Candice Norwood, Katherine Gilyard · December 8
      • The 19th Explains: Why the Respect for Marriage Act doesn’t codify same-sex marriage rights

        Kate Sosin · December 8
      • The 19th Explains: Why baby formula is still hard to find months after the shortage

        Mariel Padilla · December 1
    • From the Collection

      The Electability Myth

      Illustration of three women speaking at podiums
      • Mayra Flores’ victory set a record for women in Congress. It also reflects the growing visibility of Republican Latinas

        Candice Norwood · June 21
      • Stepping in after tragedy: How political wives became widow lawmakers

        Mariel Padilla · May 24
      • Do term limits help women candidates? New York could be a new testing ground

        Barbara Rodriguez · January 11
    • From the Collection

      The Impact of Aging

      A number of older people walking down a path of information.
      • From ballroom dancing to bloodshed, the older AAPI community grapples with gun control

        Nadra Nittle, Mariel Padilla · January 27
      • 'I'm planning on working until the day I die': Older women voters are worried about the future

        Mariel Padilla · June 3
      • Climate change is forcing care workers to act as first responders

        Jessica Kutz · May 31
    • From the Collection

      Voting Rights

      A series of hands reaching for ballots.
      • Connecticut voters approved early voting. Here’s how their new secretary of state wants to make it happen.

        Barbara Rodriguez · February 13
      • Women lawmakers in Minnesota are in the vanguard of the democracy movement

        Barbara Rodriguez · February 3
      • Election workers believe in our system — and want everyone else to, too

        Barbara Rodriguez, Jennifer Gerson · November 8

    View all collections

  • Explore by Topic

    • 19th Polling
    • Abortion
    • Business & Economy
    • Caregiving
    • Coronavirus
    • Education
    • Election 2020
    • Election 2022
    • Election 2024
    • Environment & Climate
    • Health
    • Immigration
    • Inside The 19th
    • Justice
    • LGBTQ+
    • Military
    • Politics
    • Press Release
    • Race
    • Sports
    • Technology

    View All Topics

Home
  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Latest Stories
  • Search
  • Upcoming Events
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletter
  • Donate
  • Work With Us
  • Fellowships

We’re an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. Read our story.

The 19th Represents Summit

Don’t miss our biggest event of 2023!

Register Today

Become a member

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

A grocery worker, right, passes a bundle of fresh longan to a woman.
At the worst of the pandemic, Asian American women’s unemployment was 16.4 percent in May, one of the worst rates among women of color. (Stephen Lam/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

Business & Economy

On Asian American and Pacific Islander Women’s Equal Pay Day, the numbers only tell part of real story

Incomplete data on Asian and Pacific Islander women has failed to capture the nuance of the economic disparities within that community. The Biden administration may change that.

Chabeli Carrazana

Economy Reporter

Chabeli Carrazana portrait

Published

2021-03-09 07:00
7:00
March 9, 2021
am

Share

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

For Asian American and Pacific Islander women who have long felt invisible in the nation’s response to economic inequity, the pandemic has been no different. 

The federal data on how Asian women are navigating this crisis has been incomplete at best, and misleading at worst. For years, lack of data has failed to capture the Asian experience in the economy, and during a pandemic recession, that reality and misunderstanding could be detrimental.

Tuesday marks Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI)  Women’s Equal Pay Day, noting the moment when these women will catch up to the wages White men made the year prior. It takes them about 14 months to bridge the gap that finds them earning, on average, 85 cents for every dollar White men earned in 2020. 

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

By this measure, AAPI women have the narrowest gender gap of any group of women, including White women, for whom the gap is 79 cents on the White male dollar. But that number, much like a lot of the data on Asian women, is a misleading figure.  

“The data collection on our community has been abysmal — it has always been,” said Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. “Some people are making as little as 52 cents on the White male dollar, and when you are being treated like they’re making 85 cents … it can be very frustrating and difficult because they’re not able to get the services and the support that they need.”

Within AAPI communities, there are wide disparities between women of different ethnic backgrounds. Burmese women are making as little as 52 cents, while Taiwanese women earn $1.21 compared to a $1 White men earn. That creates a wide chasm that lands AAPI women as a group on the 85 cent figure. And it fails to account for the differences in the kinds of jobs Asian women perform. 

Stories by experienced reporters you can trust and relate to.

Delivered directly to your inbox every weekday.

Please check your email to confirm your subscription!

Submitting…

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please try again later.

AAPI women are highly concentrated on either side of the job pay spectrum — as beauticians and service workers on the low-pay side and in medicine and tech fields on the high-pay side. White women, for example, are more of a bell curve, with more work concentrated in the middle, said Diane Lim, an economist and author of the EconomistMom blog. 

“Finding any kind of average for Asian women, and using that to evaluate how Asian women are doing in the economy, is really not representative,” Lim said. 

It’s important to understand that nuance, because without it, it’s near impossible to craft policy that helps Asian American women. 

“Being lumped into this category of being doctors and engineers — that makes it very difficult to access resources and support,” Choimorrow said. 

That’s especially important in a pandemic that still sees high unemployment rates for Asian American women when compared to other groups. They trailed behind White women at 6 percent unemployment in February, and have seen their unemployment rate rise at times. In January, it was 7.9 percent. 

The figures published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for Asian American women aren’t seasonally adjusted as they are for White and Black women and Latinas, because the sample size is much smaller. The data is not available monthly for Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander women at all, but rather annually. It also isn’t adjusted for seasonal trends and it captures people ages 16 and up. The typical unemployment rate statistics economists cite for other races are for those ages 20 and up. 

That makes it difficult to compare across groups and create a picture of what’s really happening. 

Asian American women continue to have higher unemployment rates than Asian American men, in part because of cultural and traditional gender roles, as well as multigenerational family structures and likely a closer adherence to safety precautions around the coronavirus. Latinas also have a higher unemployment rate than Latinos, but that dynamic has flipped for White women and Black women, with men having the higher rate. 

More on the women’s recession

  • America’s first female recession
  • Black women continue to face high unemployment as labor market sees modest gains
  • Unemployment continues to be highest for women of color, while it drops for White women

For Asian American women, there is also a relationship between living in multigenerational families and being more stringent with health precautions. Polling by the Pew Research Center shows Asian American families are the most likely to live intergenerationally and they are also the most likely to say they intend to get vaccinated. 

Those two things have led some Asian American families to choose to keep their kids in remote school rather than return in person to keep older and more vulnerable family members safe. When children are home long-term, the pandemic has demonstrated that tends to lead to women leaving the labor force in order to pick up more of the child care. 

Add to that mounting public harassment that grew in early 2020 after former President Donald Trump used language that some say inflamed xenophobia and has swelled into a wave of violence against Asian Americans that has turned fatal in at least one case.

Choimorrow said that earlier in the pandemic, she surveyed her staff about whether they felt it was safe to return to work in person. 

“They didn’t want to go back to work because they were afraid of public harassment. Their number one reason for not wanting to commute to work was having to take public transit and not knowing their safety,” she said. “They were more afraid of anti-Asian American sentiment than they were of catching the virus.” 

When all of those elements are put together, it’s not particularly surprising the Asian American women have been one of the groups with the highest rate of long-term unemployment — those unemployed for more than six months.

As of January, 38 percent of Asian American women have been counted as part of the long-term unemployed, according to data analysis by the National Women’s Law Center. Unemployed Asian women have typically been looking for work for four weeks longer than White men.

About one in four AAPI women work in frontline jobs, as pharmacists, servers, beauticians, dental assistants and child care workers — many of the fields that have cut positions. At the worst of the pandemic, Asian American women’s unemployment was 16.4 percent in May, one of the worst rates among women of color. Latina unemployment peaked at 20.1 percent in April and Black women’s unemployment got as high as 16.6 percent in May. White women unemployment never surpassed 15 percent. 

For years, granular data collection of Asian Americans has been waved off as too costly, “an analytical luxury,” Lim said. But perhaps the pandemic will change that course, making the case for getting understanding what is really happening in communities of color. 

In January, President Joe Biden signed an executive order setting up an Equitable Data Working Group to disaggregate federal data by ethnicity, gender, income, disability, veteran status and other demographic points. 

The interagency effort would include the Office of Management and Budget, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Cecilia Rouse. It would be led by the chief statistician and chief technology officer, positions that at the moment remain vacant. The administration has not announced any updates on the program, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment on it. 

But it may still be coming. In her confirmation hearing, Rouse talked about her interest in better data collection to address racial disparities. 

“Too often economists focus on average outcomes,” she said. “As a result, our analyses tell us about average economic growth and the middle of the distribution. But as our economy grows more and more unequal, that analysis fails to capture the experience of the many people who are left behind, particularly people of color.”

The argument for AAPI women, Lim said, is that even though they are a comparatively smaller part of the population, they play a significant role in industries that are the fastest-growing sectors of the economy, including hospitality, health care and computer science. 

She said she has hope that the Biden administration will begin to realize that fact. Though creating new survey models and sample methodology will take time, it could help better understand trends in the macroeconomy. 

“Just because [AAPI women] are a small part of the population,” she said, “doesn’t mean they have a small influence.”

Share

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

The 19th Represents Summit

Don’t miss our biggest event of 2023!

Register Today

Become a member

Up Next

People wait in line for food assistance cards on July 07, 2020 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.

Business & Economy

A year in, the pandemic continues to disproportionately harm women and LGBTQ+ people

Data analyzed for The 19th by Ipsos Public Affairs showed stark economic and mental health disparities. 

Read the Story

The 19th
The 19th is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Our stories are free to republish in accordance with these guidelines.

  • Donate
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Search
  • Jobs
  • Fellowships
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Community Guidelines
  • Membership
  • Membership FAQ
  • Major Gifts
  • Sponsorship
  • Privacy
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram