Black Workers Cannot Afford Another Lost Decade Employees watch behind glass doors as US President Joe Biden tours the Carrollton water treatment plant, May 6, 2021, in New Orleans, Louisiana. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images By Reading List Black workers have been hit hardest by the pandemic. We are more likely to lose income because of Covid-related layoffs and shutdowns, and by last August — five months into the pandemic — Black unemployment was nearly double that of white unemployment. But the impact is not just economic. We are three times more likely to be exposed to Covid-19 on the job and twice as likely to die from the virus. To recover from the devastating effects that Covid-19 has had on all communities, we must center the concerns and needs of Black workers in the economic recovery to come. It’s a moral imperative, but it also makes good fiscal and political sense, too.