Black STARs Have Always Been Essential, But Will We Recognize It?
The spring was very stressful for me. I’m originally from Canarsie, Brooklyn, and most of my family still lives there. Canarsie is a working, middle-class neighborhood that is 81% Black and is home to one of the best spots outside the Caribbean to get a traditional Jamaican breakfast. It also had some of the highest infection rates of COVID-19 in the city in April and May, the peak of the crisis. And while I was able to work from home since the pandemic began, most of my family and friends — grocery workers, Emergency Medical Technicians, postal workers, home health aides, and transit workers — still had to go into work while living in a COVID-19 hot spot.
My family and friends are among the millions of essential workers upon whom the country relies to keep our economy moving. Many do not have a bachelor’s degree, but they deploy skills they have learned on-the-job to fill critical roles. In fact, two-thirds of our 63 million essential workers are Skilled through Alternative Routes (STARs) instead of through a four-year college degree.
This week, we share several insights about essential STARs in our article, Shining a Light on STARs: the Essential Workers of COVID-19. Our analysis of occupational and wage data shows that my family’s story is part of a larger story of racial inequity. We find that Black workers, especially Black STARs, are overrepresented in essential roles. While 40% of all white workers are in essential roles, 52%, or 8.6 million, of the 16.5 million Black workers in the U.S. are essential workers. Even more notable, 6.3 million of those Black essential workers are STARs.
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Further, a disproportionately high number of Black STARs in essential roles are low-wage workers, defined as earning less than $37,500 annually. About 62% of Black STARs in essential roles earn low wages, compared to 49% of their white counterparts. Black workers are overrepresented in Healthcare Support, Protective Services, Transportation and Material Moving, and Community and Social Services job families — many of which are low-wage frontline occupations that come with a higher risk of infection. Moreover, low-wage workers are less likely to receive the same workplace protections against COVID-19 and have greater barriers to affordable healthcare. These and other challenges Black essential STARs face during this pandemic help explain the disproportionate impact COVID-19 has had on communities of color.
So far, most of my family and friends remain healthy, but this pandemic is likely far from over. As I think about the risks they continue to face, this crisis reveals more starkly the multitude of challenges they face in our labor market, and the disparate impact it has on them.
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In the past months, I have heard leaders in both the private and public sectors ask what they can do to recognize the contributions of essential workers. The answers are myriad and systemic. They require a reexamination of our basic assumptions about hard work and mobility in our country. Better data on STARs, including those who are Black and those who are essential workers, must inform this reexamination. My hope is that the data I’ve referenced, the article upon which it is based, and forthcoming articles from our team will enlighten business leaders and policymakers on the value essential workers provide and the conditions under which they work.
This blog post was written by Martin Evelyn, Insights Manager at Opportunity@Work as part of the new STARlight Blog Series.
The STARlight Blog Series shares data, insights and stories, from Opportunity@Work research as well as the research of others in the field, to shed light on barriers to and opportunities for economic mobility for STARs.
