One of the reasons health departments across the country are reporting African-Americans with higher incidence rates of positive COVID-19 test results and deaths is related to their exposure as frontline essential workers.
According to the website Black Demographics.com, nationwide, African-Americans are over-represented in some of the important jobs that have become essential during this crisis. In 2019, the 19.4 million working African-Americans represented only 12.3 percent of the entire American workforce, which is closely representative of total working-age Black adults.
African-American workers represent 25 percent of all food and courier delivery services which have become essential to many restaurants, retailers, and residents by keeping the flow of food and goods going to the public while much of the nation is under “stay at home” orders.
This category of delivery services have a higher potential to put workers at risk due to the number of opportunities for public encounters. This is also true of many Black employees who make up 25 percent of all postal workers as well as Black public transportation workers who make up 31 percent of all workers in that category.
A staggering 3.2 million African-American are employed as health care workers making up 17 percent of all workers in this category. Also 1.2 million of them work in hospitals (18 percent of the total in hospitals) which are at extremely high risk compared to most other workers. African-American workers also make up 31 percent of home health aid and 28 percent of all nursing care facility workers.
