{"id":269950,"date":"2020-09-26T07:34:36","date_gmt":"2020-09-26T11:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=269950"},"modified":"2020-09-26T07:34:36","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T11:34:36","slug":"in-los-angeles-latinos-hit-hard-by-pandemics-economic-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/09\/26\/in-los-angeles-latinos-hit-hard-by-pandemics-economic-storm\/","title":{"rendered":"In Los Angeles, Latinos Hit Hard By Pandemic\u2019s Economic Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Latinos now account for 60% of COVID-19<\/a> cases in California, even though they\u2019re about 40% of the population. (Pexels photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Working as a fast-food cashier in Los Angeles, Juan Quezada spends a lot of his time these days telling customers how to wear a mask.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey cover their mouth but not their nose,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re like, \u2018You gotta put your mask on right.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Quezada didn\u2019t expect to be enforcing mask-wearing. Six months ago, he was a restaurant manager, making $30 an hour, working full time and saving for retirement. But when Los Angeles County health officials shut down most restaurants in March because of the spreading pandemic, Quezada lost his job. The only work he could find pays a lot less and is part time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI only work three hours and four hours rather than eight or 10 or 12 like I used to work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Quezada doesn\u2019t know anyone who has gotten COVID-19, but the pandemic has affected nearly every aspect of his life. \u201cI am just draining my savings \u2014 draining and draining and draining,\u201d he said. \u201cI have to sell my car. Uber is a luxury.\u201d Mostly, he now bikes or rides the bus to his part-time job.<\/p>\n

Quezada is one of hundreds of people who responded in a newly published poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Among other things, the poll, which surveyed people from July 1 to Aug. 3, found that a whopping 71% of Latino households in Los Angeles County have experienced serious financial problems during the pandemic, compared overall with 52% of Black households there and 37% of whites. (Latinos can be of any race or combination of races.)<\/p>\n

Like Quezada, many are burning through their savings and are having a hard time paying for necessities such as food. Quezada estimated he has about six months of savings left.<\/p>\n

In Los Angeles, more than 35% of households report serious problems with paying credit cards, loans or other bills, while the same percentage report having depleted all or most of their savings. Eleven percent of Angelenos polled said they didn\u2019t have any savings at the start of the outbreak.<\/p>\n

Nationally, the picture is similar. In results released last week,<\/a> the poll found that 72% of Latino households around the country reported they\u2019re facing serious financial problems, double the share of whites who said so. And 46% of Latino households reported they have used up all or most of their savings during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

How Poverty Differs for Latinos<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nationally, the poll found that 63% of Latinos reported loss of household income either through reduced hours or wages, furloughs or job loss since the start of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

But Latinos have kept working through the crisis, said David Hayes-Bautista<\/a>, a professor of medicine and public health at UCLA.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Washington, the idea is you\u2019re poor because you don\u2019t work. That\u2019s not the issue with Latinos,\u201d he said. \u201cLatinos work. But they\u2019re poor. The problem is, we don\u2019t pay them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Latinos have the highest rate of labor force participation<\/a> of any group in California. In March, when state and local officials shut down many businesses, Latinos lost jobs like everyone else. But Latinos got back to work faster.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn April, the Latino [labor force participation] rate bounced right back up and actually has continued to increase slowly, whereas the non-Latino rate is dropping,\u201d Hayes-Bautista said. \u201cThe reward that Latinos have for their high work ethic is a high rate of poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

That work ethic has also contributed to a much higher rate of COVID-19. Hayes-Bautista pointed out that in California, as in some other regions in the U.S., Latinos tend to hold many of the jobs that have been deemed essential, and that\u2019s made them highly susceptible to the coronavirus. Latinos now account for 60% of COVID-19<\/a> cases in California, even though they\u2019re about 40% of the population.<\/p>\n

Not only are they getting infected, but there\u2019s been nearly a fivefold increase<\/a> in working-age Latinos dying from the coronavirus since May.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are workers usually in their prime years \u2014 peak earning power and everything else,\u201d Hayes-Bautista said. \u201cLatinos between 50 and 69, those are the ones that are being hit the hardest. That\u2019s pretty worrying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Exposed \u2014 And Often Without Health Insurance<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nationally, according to the poll, 1 in 4 Latino households report serious problems affording medical care during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Many of the essential jobs that Latinos are more likely to perform \u2014 farmworker or nursing home aide or other contract work, for example \u2014 lack benefits. That means some Latinos are more exposed to the coronavirus and less likely to have health insurance<\/a> because they don\u2019t get coverage through an employer.<\/p>\n

Others, such as Mariel Alvarez, lack health insurance because of citizenship restrictions. She lives with her parents and sisters in Los Angeles County\u2019s San Fernando Valley. Alvarez lost her sales job and her employer-sponsored health insurance when the pandemic hit in March, she said. Then she got sick.<\/p>\n

Eventually, her whole family was ill. Alvarez had to pay out-of-pocket to go to a CVS clinic near her home. But after a couple of $50 visits, it got too expensive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just couldn\u2019t afford to continue to go to the doctor,\u201d she said. She suspected it was COVID-19 but was unable to get tested.<\/p>\n

Now that she\u2019s recovered, getting a job with health insurance is crucial because she doesn\u2019t qualify for any state or federal support. Alvarez is undocumented and was brought to the U.S. by her parents as a child from Bolivia. She\u2019s one of roughly 640,000 immigrants who has a permit allowing her to work and defer deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to jeopardize that,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cYou\u2019re not supposed to use any of the government assistance when you\u2019re on that. You\u2019re only supposed to work, and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pandemic has created a big need for one job: contact tracers. So Alvarez completed a free certificate online in the hope it will give her an edge. She\u2019s going through the application process; if she gets hired, she hopes to have benefits again.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, she\u2019ll do her best not to get sick.<\/p>\n

Jackie Forti\u00e9r is a health reporter for KPCC and LAist.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

This story is part of a partnership that includes KPCC<\/a>, NPR<\/a> and KHN.<\/em><\/p>\n

Subscribe<\/a> to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Working as a fast-food cashier in Los Angeles, Juan Quezada spends a lot of his time these days telling customers …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":248077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-jackie-fortier","mauthors-kpcc","mauthors-kaiser-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269951,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269950\/revisions\/269951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}