June was a month of strong employment gains. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest Employment Situation Summary, the economy added 850,000 jobs between mid-May and mid-June, well above the average month-to-month growth of 540,000 jobs of the previous 3 months. The prime-age employment-to-population ratio, a measure that captures the share of U.S. adults between the ages of 25 and 54 who are employed, increased slightly from 77.1 percent to 77.2 percent.

Amid a strong report, however, the overall unemployment rate actually rose slightly from 5.8 percent in May to 5.9 percent in June, led by reentrants to the labor force and workers leaving their jobs. At 61.4 percent, the labor force participation rate is just 0.2 percentage points above where it was at this time in 2020. Adding 343,000 jobs, the leisure and hospitality sector continued to make big gains in June, but in other industries, net employment declined. Construction lost 7,000 jobs, and financial activities lost 1,000 jobs.

In addition, job gains continue to be greatly uneven along the lines of race, ethnicity, and gender. For Latina women, employment has shrunk 5.9 percent since the onset of the coronavirus recession. In June, 763,000 fewer Black women were employed than in February 2020—a 7.2 percent decline with respect to its pre-pandemic level.

Another group that has been hit hard during the coronavirus recession is foreign-born workers in the United States. Between February 2020 and June 2021, the number of foreign-born workers employed declined 5.9 percent, compared to a 3.1 percent fall for U.S.-born workers. For both foreign- and U.S.-born workers, the decline in employment has been much deeper for women.

Read the full article about COVID-19 and foreign-born workers by Kathryn Zickuhr and Carmen Sanchez Cumming at Equitable Growth.