COLUMN: The pandemic shut-down hit low-wage workers and minorities the hardest

A graph showing the percent change in the Salem area’s private sector employment from Februay 2020. (Source: Oregon Employment Department)

The pandemic-related shutdown of the economy will go into the record books with a lot of “firsts” and we’ve just seen another one. The unemployment rate in the Salem area came down by three percentage points in one month, from May to June. In the last recession, the unemployment rate took three years to come…