Yahoo Finance’s Brian Cheung discusses today’s Yahoo U: Economic disparity within Asian American communities.

Video Transcript

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JEN ROGERS: Welcome back to "Yahoo Finance Live." So we've all heard a lot about this K-shaped recovery. One subgroup that's been particularly affected is Asian women in the United States, and Brian's got the breakdown of the challenges they face in this week's Yahoo U. Brian?

BRIAN CHEUNG: Thanks, Jen. Well, the events of this week in Atlanta raised a lot of questions about the discrimination and racism faced by Asian-Americans. But what's also a national story is also a socioeconomic story, and that makes it worth exploring the disparities that specifically Asian women and particularly low-income earning Asian women in this country face.

And, if we bring up our first data point, you'll see that the aggregate statistics really don't tell the whole story. So these are unemployment rates overall and the unemployment rate for Asians. And it is indeed the case that Asians suffered steeper job losses at the beginning of this crisis, right? Look at the purple line.

But the Asian jobless rate has caught up to the national average and is now actually lower than the national unemployment rate. But, again, keep in mind that this figure doesn't tell you anything about the nature of the jobs coming back, and it also doesn't tell you anything about the nature of who is returning to their jobs.

So let's zoom into specifically Asian women. And this data comes from the Chicago Fed. And it shows not the unemployment rate, but the participation rate of all women ages 25 to 65. And you'll notice how the steepest loss in the midst of the pandemic was among Asians, which is the red line here, compared to other groups.

And, in the summer of last year, quarter 2, only 32% of all Asian women in this age group were at work. And that's a pretty remarkable dip, which raises the question, why did that happen? Why so disproportionately affected?

The Chicago Fed, which again compiled this data, said it's difficult to attribute it to one factor, but one theory concerns the industries that Asian women tend to be employed in. And this comes from the Center for American Progress. It's a breakdown of census data.

And a large share of Asian women you can see working in this country work in restaurants and food services. 6.9% of all Asian-American Pacific Islander women are in that field. And 3.2% are in nail salons and personal care. So, if you combine those two, about 1 in 10 Asian-American Pacific Islander women in this country are in these jobs.

And what's common about these fields? Higher content, service jobs, you're interacting with people in close proximity. So the COVID shutdowns also had an enormous impact on this cohort because of the business closures and then also, understandably, a reluctance to come back to work because of how high contact they are.

Now, this is especially devastating because those are also low-income jobs. And, at large, the American-- Asian-American community has the largest within-group income inequality compared to any other group in the United States. So these stats come from McKinsey, and it uses census data. And it shows that the top 10% of earners in the Asian-American group made almost 11 times the income of the bottom 10%.

Now, of course, income inequality is a story for America at large, but this is a wider chasm than the national average of about 8.7 times. And a lot of the people at the bottom, Asian women, those working low-income, high-contact jobs. And I just want to be careful to point out that, obviously, there's differences between subgroups of the Asian-American community. It's not the same. So the median Taiwanese woman will not have the same labor market experience or opportunity as the median Vietnamese or Hmong woman, for example.

But still, if we come back to this chart-- this is the same one I just showed you-- the story is clear, right? Asian women across the board were impacted by COVID. And it's true that Asian women are coming back to work. I mean, you take a look at the third quarter gains.

But you think about the thought process if you're one of these low-income workers, right? It's great if you're back to work at the restaurant, at the nail salon, at the spa. But not only do you have to worry now about the risk of getting the virus at work because of the high-contact nature of your job. You have to worry about the risk of getting gunned down at work.

So, as I wrap up here, I can't understate the importance of reminding everyone that Asian-American-- the Asian-American community is not a monolith, right? The stereotype of the high-achieving, Ivy League grads working as doctors is exactly that. It's a stereotype.

And, as we watched the events that unfolded in Atlanta this week, it should be clear that the lived experience of many Asians, specifically low-income Asian women, in this country is far more complex. But that wraps up this week's Yahoo U, and an important thing to remember for anyone trying to digest and process what happened this week.

JEN ROGERS: Yeah, I think it's really important, Brian. Thank you so much for doing that. I think, as everybody has, you know, watched these tragic events, just to bring that overlay to it, it does bring a lot of context that I think people don't know. And I learned something from Yahoo U. So thank you, Brian.