Racial and Ethnic Inequities in Occupational Exposure Across and Between U.S. Cities
Hispanic/Latino and White Essential Workers' Risk of Exposure to COVID-19 in 27 Cities
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Report Publish Date: November 13, 2021
This journal article describes a study that examined Hispanic/Latino and White essential workers who were at high risk of exposure to COVID-19 in 27 cities during the height of the pandemic.
Primary Takeaways
The authors found that U.S.- and foreign-born Hispanic/Latino workers were more likely overall to be in high-risk occupations than were White workers. But the percentage of each group in these occupations, and the disparities between them, varied by city.
Overview and Objectives
Hispanic people in the U.S. were nearly three times more likely to die of COVID-19 than non-Hispanic White people. Some research has suggested that being exposed to risks on the job is a large reason Hispanic/Latino people were more likely to be exposed to COVID-19. To help better understand workers’ risk of exposure to COVID-19 infection, the authors of this article wanted to categorize essential jobs and high-risk jobs and quantify the percentage of Hispanic/Latino and non-Hispanic White workers in each type of job.
Hypothesis or Approach
“We hypothesized that across all [metropolitan statistical areas], foreign-born Hispanic/Latino workers would be most likely to work in essential and high-exposure jobs, followed by U.S. born Hispanic/Latino and NHW workers,” the authors write. They used data on the 27 cities in the Big Cities Health Coalition, drawn from the Census Bureau’s 2015–2019 five-year American Community Survey (ACS) public use microdata sample file, via IPUMS USA.
To define essential workers, the authors used guidelines from the Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. They determined job risk based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) O*NET survey.
How This Influences Change
“Local area specific estimates of racial/ethnic disparities in occupational risk can help cities plan and target interventions to mitigate risk among specific occupational and racial/ethnic groups at elevated risk of exposure to infectious respiratory disease, and potentially help explain differences in disparities by metropolitan area,” the authors write.
Research: Go Deeper
Research suggests that racial/ethnic disparities in COVID-19 in the US are largely driven by higher rates of exposure to SARS-CoV-2 among Hispanic/Latino and Black populations. Occupational exposures play a large role in structuring risk of exposure, and essential workers are at elevated risk of COVID-19 infection. At a national-level, workers categorized as “essential” and “high-risk” are disproportionately Hispanic/Latino, but we lack analysis examining local-level racial/ethnic disparities in potential occupational exposures. Using the 2015–2019 5-year American Community Survey, we estimated disparities between the proportion of US Born Hispanic/Latino, foreign-born Hispanic/Latino, and non-Hispanic white (NHW) essential or high-risk workers in 27 of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. We found that, on average, 66.3%, 69.9%, and 62.6% of US-born Hispanics, foreign-born Hispanics, and NHW, respectively, are essential workers, while 50.7%, 49.9%, 49.5% are high exposure risk workers, respectively. The median absolute difference in proportions of US born Hispanic/
Latino and NHW essential workers was 4.2%, and between foreign-born Hispanic/Latino and NHW essential workers was 7.5%, but these disparities varied widely by city. High likelihood of occupational transmission may help explain disparities in COVID-19 infection and mortality for Hispanic/Latino populations, especially foreign-born, and may also help explain heterogeneity in the magnitude of these disparities, with relevance for other acute infectious respiratory illnesses spread in the workplace.
SSM - Population Health 16 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100959
Research Team
This study and report was conducted and created by the following people.
- Alina S. Schnake-Mahl
- Mariana Lazo
- Kristina Durejaa
- Nahian Ehtesham
- Usama Bilal
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