Twenty sixteen may be remembered for many things, including as the year of the stereotype. Broad statements have been made about many groups of people this year. Sometimes, these stereotypes are positive. For instance, there is a conventional view that Asian Americans are generally pretty successful in school and in the workplace.
But a recent Labor Department report indicates that the nation’s nearly eighteen million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have vastly different experiences in the labor market and in school. As indicated by writer Melanie Trottman, last year, Filipinos working full time in the U.S. earned less than two thirds of the median for Indian Americans.
Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders suffered unemployment at more than twice the rate of Japanese Americans. Only a third of Vietnamese Americas has at least a bachelor’s degree compared with sixty percent of Koreans.
A number of Asian American groups generate higher median weekly earnings that whites, including people of Indian, Japanese, and Korean decent. The median weekly earnings of Vietnamese Americans is closer to that of African Americans.
