Giving Compass' Take:

• A report at Migration Policy Institute demonstrates the disproportionate impact of coronavirus on unemployment for immigrant women.

• How does the disparate impact of the pandemic reflect pre-existent inequities for immigrant women? How can we work to build back from COVID-19 so as to eliminate these inequities?

• Learn about immigrant health-care workers during coronavirus.

Working-age immigrant women in the United States entered the COVID-19-induced recession with unemployment rates similar to those of other groups. Yet they have been among the most affected by pandemic-related job losses, seeing their unemployment peak at 18.5 percent before declining to 11.2 percent in September 2020—even as jobless rates for immigrant men and U.S.-born men and women never topped 16 percent and fell below 8 percent in September.

Just 46 percent of working-age immigrant women were employed in September, a 7 percentage point swing from their employment rate in January before the lockdowns, social distancing, and other pandemic-related measures began. This fact sheet seeks to explain why immigrant women have been hit so hard by the coronavirus-induced recession, which triggered unemployment levels unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

It suggests the drop in employment for foreign-born women may be due, in part, to their often-dual roles as workers and parents, which became even more complex when many school districts turned to distance learning. The concentration of immigrant women in certain labor market niches, including in leisure and hospitality, may also explain their stubbornly high unemployment rate.

Read the full report about unemployment for immigrant women at Migration Policy Institute.