Stock market gains during 2021 exacerbated existing racial wealth inequality, new data show.
The New York Federal Reserve Bank reports the real net worth of white people grew 30 percent more than that of Black people and 9 percent more than that of Hispanic people from the first quarter of 2019 through the second quarter of 2023.
The job market showed unexpected strength during that time period, with the overall unemployment rate now at 3.7 percent and the unemployment rate for Black Americans at a near-record low of 5.3 percent. Most Black full-time workers now earn about 7.1 percent more than before the pandemic.
However, the wealth gap persists because many more white households are invested in stocks and mutual funds. In 2022, about 65.6 percent of white households had stock investments, compared with 28.3 percent of Hispanic households and 39.2 percent of Black households, another Fed survey found.
