San Diego City Wire

San Diego Business reported that the city’s economy has been especially hard hit by the pandemic, with lower-income individuals suffering more acutely. 

San Diego’s plentiful employers were able to add back 14,300 jobs in November, which is promising to some extent, but the fact of the matter is that lower-income workers have been injured the most, as they were the ones to have lost their jobs indefinitely in many cases. 

Higher paid individuals did not fare as badly, as they were able to maintain their jobs or get new ones. 

Jobs which pay under $41,000 per year have remained 18% below where they were before COVID-19 struck, showing how severe the damages are compared to nonfarm positions which only fell 6% from their highest level in February 2020.

Low-income employment, on the other hand, fell 43% from February 2020 to April 2020, which stands in stark contrast to the overall job loss percentage dip, which was 15%. 

Wholesalers have only been able to recover 11% of the positions lost in 2020, whereas higher-skilled industries — professional, scientific and technical services — were able to bounce back completely. 

Job loss in lower-income demographics also disproportionately impact minority groups, as over 60% of positions that are the lowest-paid are non-white indivduals. 

Connections have also been noticed in lifestyle trends of individuals with low income positions. Individuals who make under $41,000 annually are more likely to live from paycheck to paycheck, which is bad news for the many tenants who have been unable to pay their rent since the onset of the pandemic. Extensions and allowances were put into place to protect tenants from being evicted by their landlords due to inability to pay, however, those protections will soon be lifted, leaving these low-income workers with no housing protection. 

All of these factors, when observed together, make it apparent that the wealth gap will continue to grow in San Diego for the foreseeable future.