San Francisco (CNN Business)In May 2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered the worst US jobs report ever: 20.5 million jobs had been lost in the previous month and the national unemployment rate had reached 14.7%. More data followed, showing how black and Hispanic Americans (with unemployment rates of 16.7% and 18.9%, respectively) were hit much harder by the pandemic than white workers (14.2%), driving the US wealth gap further enlarged.
But until last month, one glaring detail remained undisclosed: The unemployment rate among Native Americans rose even faster than either of these groups to a graduation 28.6% in April.
While the monthly job report regularly breaks down the unemployment rate for Asians, Black, Hispanic and White Americans, dates specific to Native Americans — classified by the agency as Native Americans and Alaskan Natives — were never included.
Given the comparatively small population of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the US, the sample size of the survey participants meant that the monthly data collected from the most recent population survey conducted by the Department of Labor and the Census Bureau was volatile and not sufficiently reliable, the BLS said. Therefore, the data was instead included in broader annual and semi-annual reports on issues such as race and ethnicity.
In response to ongoing calls for more visibility and inclusion — which intensified as the pandemic negatively impacted minorities — the BLS changed course and last month began releasing monthly economic data for Native Americans.
“We examined the estimates to see if the release of the monthly data would help in understanding the AIAN workforce,” Patrick Carey, Deputy Commissioner for the Office for Current Employment Analysis at the BLS, CNN Business said. “Despite the high volatility, we ultimately thought the data did.”
Although the data for Indigenous peoples will still not be part of the monthly job report (because it is not seasonally adjusted) that highlighting and publishing data more frequently online is a win for both visibility and real-world progress, said Gabriel R. Sanchez, co-founder of the Native American Budget and Policy Institute at the University of New Mexico , where he is also a professor of political science.
In November, Sanchez, who is also a Brookings Institution fellow in governance studies, co-authored a report on the economic health of Native Americans. This report highlighted the lack of timely employment data and why it was important to start reporting and tracking this data in the future.
“Native Americans are largely excluded from the important discussion of economic well-being in the United States — another form of annihilation for a group that continually struggles with marginalization and exclusion in U.S. society,” the authors write.
This lack of up-to-date data proved particularly damaging during the pandemic, which has disproportionately affected minorities and indigenous peoples, they noted. Without up-to-date data on a key demographic, government intervention and support are likely to suffer, Sanchez said in an interview with CNN Business.
“We want data-driven policy decisions, we want everything data-driven,” he said. “But until that data is available, that’s impossible.”
The Brookings Report and inquiries from President Joe Biden’s administration played a role at the agency that’s rethinking its previous approaches, Carey said.
While the BLS releases some estimates for Native Americans in its annual report on the characteristics of the workforce by race and ethnicity, there are some analytical advantages to having the data released more frequently, he said.
“You can see some clear trends in the monthly data,” Carey said. “You just have to be careful that the data is volatile.”
The BLS released side-by-side comparisons of seasonally adjusted monthly unemployment rates for the general population and Native Americans goes back almost 20 years. Overall, the data show that the non-seasonally adjusted indigenous unemployment rate is consistently above the national average, in some cases by a factor of two.
The data also showed the dramatic rise in unemployment and sustained double-digit unemployment rates for Native Americans in the first year of the pandemic.
“It is disheartening to see the impact of the economic shock on Indigenous workers in the early parts of the pandemic,” said Casey Lozar, director of the Center for Indian Rural Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes.
Native Americans have a larger proportion of service-sector jobs than other populations, which contributes to higher unemployment rates, Lozar said. In addition, geographic and systemic economic vulnerabilities – such as a lack of childcare infrastructure – play an outsized role in rural and tribal areas, he said.
In the absence of frequent federal data leaks, the CICD has attempted to serve as a repository of economic intelligence for the country’s Indigenous people during the pandemic. The center used what was available through the BLS and the census, in addition to conducting surveys of tribal leaders and community members, launched a labor market dashboard and this year announced a long-term initiative and expansion of the center to collect and report new economic data analyze sets.
Lozar said these efforts and the efforts of the BLS are positive steps to combat a “data desert.”
“[The data gaps] are serious and it will take time and it will require really strong relationship development with Indian country and with other data partners,” he said.
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