A new poll by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows how divided Americans are when it comes to their experiences with money during the pandemic. About 44% of poll respondents said they are still experiencing a loss of income due to Covid-19, while 50% said they weren’t seeing any income losses at all.
Of the 44% reporting reduced incomes, most said the effect was minor. Only 17% of poll respondents reported a major impact on their current incomes.
About half of respondents said they had experienced some kind of income loss over the nearly year-long course of the pandemic. A quarter said someone in their household had been laid off, and a third reported that someone in their household had experienced a reduction in their work hours. The results varied for different demographic groups, with Black (29%) and Hispanic (38%) respondents reporting more layoffs than whites (21%).
“The poll’s findings reflect what some economists have called a ‘K-shaped recovery,’ where there have been divergent fortunes among Americans,” the AP said. “Those with office jobs were able to transition to working from home while those who worked in hard-hit industries such as entertainment, dining and travel suffered. The poor have struggled to recover financially compared to the wealthy and Black and Latino households have not bounced back as well as their white counterparts.”
The poll of 1,434 people was conducted between February 25 and March 1 and has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.