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One-Third Of Workers Are Unemployed In LA’s ‘Black Beverly Hills’
The coronavirus pandemic has left one out of five workers in L.A. County out of a job. But joblessness has climbed even higher in parts of L.A. with large Black populations.
Many Black neighborhoods are now experiencing levels of unemployment that are double — and in some cases triple — the rates seen in L.A.’s predominantly White neighborhoods.
Even higher-income Black neighborhoods are reeling from high unemployment — like View Park-Windsor Hills, sometimes called the “Black Beverly Hills.”
The community is 80.1% Black with a median household income of $91,542, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
It now has an unemployment rate of 32.2%, the highest in all of urban Los Angeles and double that of the actual Beverly Hills.
Experts say Black workers are now confronting an acute version of the unemployment crisis they’ve always faced.
“The crisis that we're seeing today ... is not a surprise," said Lola Smallwood Cuevas, a researcher with the UCLA Labor Center. "It has been generations in the making.”
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