One chart shows how workers making less than $15.30 an hour were hit especially hard during the pandemic
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Juliana Kaplan
Feb 5, 2021, 21:47 IST
People line up outside a Kentucky Career Center hoping to find assistance with their unemployment claim in Frankfort.Reuters
Workers making under $15.30 an hour saw greater losses at the pandemic's start and a slow recovery.
BofA calculates $15.30 an hour as the US median wage.
It's another entry in the pandemic story of a K-shaped recovery.
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Workers who earned less than the median hourly wage saw greater job losses when the pandemic started and have seen a slower recovery, according to a new BofA Global Research report.
BofA calculates the median average hourly wage as $15.30, using Current Population Survey (CPS) data. That equates to a salary of around $31,000 a year. The current poverty rate for a single person in the US is $12,880 a year.
That means those making a yearly salary of less than $31,000 a year saw the greatest job losses when the pandemic hit, and have continued to feel those effects: "Recovery has been far more sluggish with employment 14% below levels seen prior to the pandemic in February 2020," the BofA report says.
Those on the other side of the BofA median wage are experiencing things a little bit differently. While they saw a "modest decline" when the pandemic began, the report said, their employment is "essentially back to pre-pandemic levels."
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With no additional stimulus relief, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that unemployment may not rebound to pre-pandemic levels for a decade.
Throughout the pandemic, inequality in recovery - and impact - has continually taken shape, crystallizing in a K-shaped recovery - that's when high earners see their jobs and incomes grow and rebound, while low earners experience the opposite.
In the meantime, billionaires around the world have made $3.9 trillion during the pandemic, according to an Oxfam report. They also saw initial losses at the start of the pandemic, but had a full recovery by November. By the end of 2020, the world's 10 richest billionaires had seen large enough gains to pay for the entire world's vaccines. Conversely, the Oxfam report said recovery for those at the bottom could take up to a decade.
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