LI's wage gap in Black and white

Just a month after the COVID-19 pandemic sent the nation into paralysis, Long Island saw its unemployment rate quadruple from 3.8% to 16% — and that’s only scratching the surface of the outbreak’s potential impact on the Island’s economy. What’s more, the data also show the virus is exacerbating existing inequalities.

This week marks a little over a month since the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd shined a spotlight on racial inequality and sparked an ongoing wave of nationwide protesting against police brutality. Amid renewed conversations on the country’s racial divide, Newsday Opinion’s research project nextLI dug into regional numbers from 2018 on black-white unemployment, wealth, healthcare and poverty as part of our series “Race on LI.”

Unemployment on Long Island had steadily declined in recent years, following national trends. From 2012 to 2018, Long Island’s jobless rate dropped by 3.5 percentage points, while the national rates decreased by 3.9 percentage points, according to the state Department of Labor.

Although it is too early to forecast the specific toll of the pandemic, we know its impact might worsen Long Island’s existing racial inequities and point to a wider unemployment gap in the future. Here’s what we pulled from Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics and State Department of Labor data:

• Black Long Islanders are twice as likely to live in poverty compared to white Long Islanders.
• Black Long Islanders are twice as likely to be unemployed compared to white Long Islanders.
• The median Black household makes nearly $16,000 less than the median white household, based on Census income data.
• A quarter of Black households make less than a third of LI’s median income of $105,000.
• While 1 out 5 white households make more than $200,000, only 1 out of 10 Black households make that amount.

The numbers underscore how Blacks experience more systemic disadvantages than whites on Long Island and the country as a whole. And, a New York Times analysis finds the Black-white wage gap is as wide as it was in 1950 — before the pressure of the civil rights movement that influenced landmark rulings and legislation ending racial segregation in public schooling and voting, like Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the Civil Rights Act in 1957.

Unequal access to affordable housing, quality food and health care services, and job opportunities, along with cultural barriers, are persistent obstacles stagnating Long Island’s minority groups. If you’re Black and living on Long Island, you’re more likely to live in poverty and less likely to have a job or access to health care — and you’ll likely make less than the median income.

Perhaps the clearest indicator of racial inequality is the pandemic’s uneven toll on Long Islanders of color; the virus hit the region’s densest, often minority, districts the hardest.

If Long Island is to be a more equitable place, it must address its deep Black-and-white divide.

Nicole Ki is an intern with nextLI, a research project of Newsday Opinion.