Unemployment in Socially Disadvantaged Communities in Tennessee, US, During the COVID-19

Abstract

Urban studies related to previous pandemics and impacts on cities focused on vulnerable categories including poor and marginalized groups. We continue this tradition and analyze unemployment outcomes in a context of a multi-dimensional social disadvantage that is unfolding during the ongoing public health crisis. For this, we first propose an approach to identify communities by social disadvantage status captured by several key metrics. Second, we apply this methodology in the study of the effect of social disadvantage on unemployment during the COVID-19 and measure the COVID-19-related economic impact using the most recent data on unemployment. The study focuses upon vulnerable communities in in the southeastern US (Tennessee) with a concentration of high social vulnerability and rural communities. While all communities initially experienced the impact that was both sudden and severe, communities that had lower social disadvantage pre-COVID were much more likely to start resuming economic activities earlier than communities that were already vulnerable pre-COVID due to high social disadvantage with further implications upon community well-being. The impact of social disadvantage grew stronger post-COVID compared with the pre-pandemic period. In addition, we investigate worker characteristics associated with adverse labor market outcomes during the later stage of the current economic recession. We show that some socio-demographic groups have a systematically higher likelihood of being unemployed. Compared with the earlier stages, racial membership, poverty and loss of employment go hand in hand, while ethnic membership (Hispanics) and younger male workers are not associated with higher unemployment. Overall, the study contributes to a growing contemporaneous research on the consequences of the COVID-19 recession. Motivated by the lack of the research on the spatial aspect of the COVID-19-caused economic recession and its economic impacts upon the vulnerable communities during the later stages, we further contribute to the research gap.

A neighborhood-level analysis of association between social vulnerability and COVID-19 in ahvaz, Iran

“…Unemployment is a major indicator of social vulnerability [ [31] , [32] , [33] , [34] , [35] ]. Employed persons typically have a higher standard of living and better access to health care, and given their stable employment conditions, they can cope better with economic restrictions.…”

Analysis of disease burden in socially disadvantaged areas: Mapping of geographical inequalities in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality using a social disadvantage index in Tennessee

“…Once a decision was made on the risk factors for severe COVID-19, data was collected and used to compute a composite variable as summed-up z-scores of the above variables to represent social disadvantage (Antipova and Momeni, 2021).…”

“…A methodological flowchart for this study is presented in Figure 1. Finally, the impact of social disadvantage on economic wellbeing grew stronger as the pandemic progressed compared with the pre-pandemic period (Antipova and Momeni, 2021), thus, health assessment at different time points particularly for disadvantaged communities is needed due to likely variations in inequality in exposure and pandemic susceptibility (Karaye and Horney, 2020).…”