Foundations for a Just and Inclusive Recovery: Economic Security, Health and Safety, and Agency and Voice in the COVID-19 Era

Abstract

This report presents the findings from a nationally representative survey that documents the experiences of U.S. workers—particularly underpaid and frontline workers, Black and Latinx workers, and women workers—amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and related recession, and gauges the interaction of these crises with structural racism and sexism. Administered in September and October of 2020, evidence from the Just Recovery Survey suggests that economic security, health and safety, and agency and voice interact with and reinforce one another, but, for many workers, they are undermined by racism, sexism, and other structural inequities. Showing the significant, often compounding impacts of race, gender, and socioeconomic status on people’s basic well-being and economic trajectories, the results from the Just Recovery Survey add to a growing body of evidence pointing to the need for immediate interventions to curtail the effects of the pandemic, but importantly, the need for deeper structural reforms in the long-term.