Equity as the new normal: the economic consequences of the pandemic, from The COVID Impact Project - focusing on systemically oppressed populations

Abstract The objective of this study is to assess the employment impacts of COVID on systemically marginalized populations. A cross-sectional COVID Impact study examined participants during October 2020 to November 2021 at the Bridge Engagement Center in Ottawa, Canada. A survey co-created and administered by people with lived/living experience of being precariously housed, low-income, and/or racialized (including Indigenous peoples) assessed their demographics, socioeconomics, and health. Income and employment were assessed by descriptive statistics, directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), Bayesian logistic modeling and constructed a directed acyclic diagram to test the causality between selected demographics and employment income. Participants aged 16–65 years (n = 416) were male (n = 201), female (n = 198), and other (n = 5). Ethnicities were white (n = 118), African Caribbean Black (n = 118), Indigenous (n = 142) and other (n = 26). We observed social assistance receipt (88%), psychological distress (General Health Questionnaire-12 > 3) (47%), housing insecurity (61%), and food insecurity (65%). Sixteen of 59 newly unemployed people received pandemic funding. Unemployment (n = 340) odds ratios (95% credible intervals) were: Indigenous, 6.38 (5.36, 7.54); African Caribbean Black, 5.76 (4.85, 6.79); other, 3.81 (3.19, 4.50); and white, 1.81 (1.64, 1.99). Systemically marginalized populations demonstrated disproportionate impact by the COVID-19 pandemic with the highest odds of unemployment being for non-white populations during COVID, as compared to pre-COVID. The findings from this study indicate the urgent need for an equitable, inclusive, just, comprehensive, and most importantly compassionate social safety net that supports everyone.