Britain’s Racial Divide Is On Display in Work, Pay and Poverty

(Bloomberg) -- Protests under the Black Lives Matter movement are causing the U.K. to look at its past to help understand the economic disadvantage of the present.

The killing of George Floyd and the coronavirus have, respectively, forced the country to confront its history and links to the slave trade as well as policies that activists say have ignored -- and in some cases exacerbated -- the plight of minorities.

Those inequalities, ranging from poor pay to a lack of diversity in leadership positions, are putting pressure on politicians and companies to tackle the gaping holes. And the fact that minorities and other low-paid workers have borne the financial brunt of the pandemic is forcing the government to insist there will be no return to the austerity that followed the global recession more than a decade ago.

But as the charts below show, the divide in the U.K. is a large one to address.

Analysis by the Office for National Statistics showed that Black males are 3.3 times more likely to die from a Covid-19-related death than White males, with a figure of 2.4 times for women. The difference can be partly explained by factors such as socio-economic disadvantage, but even adjusting for that, it said the risk is still higher for people of a Black ethnic background.

That socio-economic disparity is clear in government figures on poverty across ethnic groups. Compared with white households, Asian and Black households have higher rates of “persistently low incomes,” and are more likely to be in severely deprived areas.

Pay for Black workers is lower than for White workers. That’s often because there are fewer BAME people in senior positions within organizations, something that can be seen across management levels in companies and institutions.

At the very top level of U.K. Plc, the Parker Report on diversity earlier this year found that 37% of FTSE 100 companies did not have any ethnic minority representation on their boards. For the FTSE 350, that figure was almost 60%.

Property and home ownership is an obsession in Britain, and successive governments have introduced various plans to help people buy. But ownership rates are lower for Black families, while they are also more likely to be in social housing, according to government data.

When it comes to dealing with social issues, Parliament plays a key role. Diversity of the House of Commons has improved, but a report by Business in the Community this week said that the proportion of BAME -- Black, Asian and minority ethnic -- lawmakers remains just 10%.

That report also showed that across the public and private sectors, Black people account for just 1.5% of managers, directors and senior officials.

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