Sign Up! | Make Asianlife your home page
Home
Meet People
Job Board
Events
Magazine
My Profile
   User Log-In
User ID
Password

Our community

Subscribe
Subscribe to our newsletter
Email
Ethnicity
Interested in writing for AsianLife.com? Contact us at editor@AsianLife.com.
 
Poll
Q. For whom did you vote in the presidential election?
Vote
* The poll results will be displayed after you vote.
more..
Tuesday June 26, 2012

Why Do Asian Americans Have the Worst Long-Term Unemployment?

Jordan Weissmann,The Atlantic

Asian Americans are the best educated ethnic group in the United States, by a long shot.* Logically, that means they should have the least severe unemployment, given that more educated workers tend to have an easier time in the job market. Instead, according to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, the Asian community suffered from the most severe long-term joblessness of any racial demographic in 2010, during the slow, early period of the economic recovery.

As shown in the graph, 48.7 percent of unemployed Asian Americans had been out of a job for 27 weeks or more. Blacks were next, at 48.5 percent, followed by Whites, at 42.7 percent.

What makes the situation even odder is the more educated Asians are, the more they fall behind whites. Asians with just a high school diploma were more likely to be employed than whites; however, Asians with a bachelor's degree or higher more likely to be unemployed.

The report's author offers up three explanations for the mystery. First, there's the California problem: About a third of all Asian Americans live in the Golden State, which has disproportionately high joblessness, both short term and long-term. Second, there's immigrant bias: Perhaps employers prefer to hire U.S.-born workers. Third, there's racial bias. If Asians had the same long-term unemployment as their equally-educated white peers, their long-term jobless rate would be 8.1 percentage points lower.

*About 34 percent of Asian Americans have a bachelor's degree, compared to 25 percent of whites. Another 23 percent have an advanced degree, versus 14 percent for whites.

6 comments

Comments

  • Jan 26, 2013 7:59pm - BrightonSA
    Let's discard the so called research from experts for a moment. Concentrate on Asians who are in employment. Time & time again, we hear stories of how Asians who are just as good or even better than their white counterparts, often are sidelined when it comes to promotion & training.

    Extrapolate that to the unemployment, why should there be any surprise?
  • Jul 17, 2012 12:09pm - Notsurprised
    All Asian, well educated or not, are transparent to society and will suffer this injustice. As long as the Asians are taking this silently, the discrimination will continue and prevail. Asian should stop looking at this as a "tragedy", we should be more politically active, speak up and be heard.
  • Jul 14, 2012 8:18am - NY Asian
    That Asians are also minimally (token?) represented in Hollywood, cater to, if not amplifies this discordant sociological tragedy. Yes, job-discrimination is an American "tragedy!"
  • Jul 12, 2012 9:20pm - Fred
    The second and third reason seems more like a complete guess with no evidence. The first reason sounds valid as Asians as a minority are more concentrated in urban areas that gets hit hard by recession. Whites are spread out all over the country. The places hit least by the recession are in the midwest where there are very little Asians population.
  • Jul 12, 2012 8:53am - awntwo
    This article is touching on the subject of discrimination against Asian Americans; that as An Asian American I feel. However, with that said, there's a lot of holes in this article; one glaring example: the type of jobs is a big factor on skewing this report.
  • Jul 12, 2012 6:19am - iamasiam.com
    With regards education, you must factor in age. Having a higher education may simply mean belonging to an older age group. Older Asian Americans may be more vulnerable to such biases.

Post a comment

Name:
Comment:
Validation: = (Type the number you see here)
Copyright © 2013 AsianLife All rights reserved.
0.101809