6 Occupation and industry affiliation can explain only part of these COVID-19 labor market disparities. 7 In the years before the pandemic, I was encouraged to see prime-age individuals in all demographic groups drawn into the strong labor market, reversing the previous  Staff calculations based on the microdata from the September Current Population Survey.
After declining by 11.5 percentage points between February and April, the employment-to-population ratio for Black prime-age individuals has recovered by 4.5 percentage points. The comparable numbers for White prime-age individuals was a 10.4 percentage point decline followed by an improvement of 6 percentage points.