San José, CA – On Wednesday, March 1, food stamp benefits were cut for more than 30 million low-income Americans. The average loss will be about one-third of the monthly benefits. Hardest hit would be many seniors getting food stamps, who would lose more than 90% of their monthly benefit.

Commemorates 1942 Executive Order 9066

San José, CA – On Sunday, February 19, more than 350 people from the Japanese American community gathered at the San José Buddhist Church Betsuin Hall for the 43rd annual Day of Remembrance. The San José Day of Remembrance was organized the Nihonmachi Outreach Committee. The event commemorates the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1942. Executive Order 9066 laid the basis for the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II.

San José, CA – On Friday, November 4, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that the unemployment rate in October rose from 3.7% from 3.5% in September. The increase was even larger for Asian Americans and Latinos, who saw their unemployment rates rise by 0.4%, twice the overall rise.

Inflation for workers still at 40-year highs

San José, CA – Inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers or CPI-W has been rising this year at the fastest rate in 40 years. This high inflation continued in September, with prices measured by CPI-W up 8.5% over a year ago. Higher prices combined with fewer hours means that the purchasing power of average weekly earnings for workers fell 3.5% from a year earlier.

San José, CA – On Friday, October 7 the U.S. Department of Labor released their report on new jobs and the unemployment rate in September. According to the Department of Labor, there were 263,000 more jobs in September than in August. This is the weakest job report since December of 2020.

San José, CA – On July 29, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released their report on Gross Domestic Product for the second quarter of the year, April to June. GDP went down at a 0.9% annual rate. This followed a decline of 1.6% in GDP in the first three months of the year.

Continuing claims hits highest number since November 2021

San José, CA – On Thursday, July 21, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that the number of people collecting unemployment insurance benefits, increased by 51,000 for the week ending July 16. This brought the total number to 1,384,000, the highest since November 2021. New claims for unemployment insurance increased to 251,000, also the highest since November. The increase was only 7000 over the week before, but most economists had expected the number of new claims to fall.

San José, CA – Over the last two years, hundreds of thousands of Asian Americans and their supporters have taken to the streets to protest the wave of violence against Asian Americans. From the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when a Burmese family was assaulted in Texas; to the Atlanta Spa killing in April 2021, where six of the eight people killed were Asian American women, this wave of violence against Asian Americans inspired protests across the country, even including middle-school students.

San José, CA – Real earnings, or workers’ wages after adjusting for inflation, had their biggest drop in 40 years last month, as prices continued to rise faster than paychecks. Real average weekly earnings, which best reflect workers’ paychecks after adjusting for changes in wages, prices and hours worked, fell 1% in June of 2022 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over the last year, real average weekly earnings fell 3.9% as inflation outpaced pay raises and average weekly hours fell by almost an hour.

San José, CA – 40 years ago, on June 23, 1982, Chinese American Vincent Chin died after being beaten by a Chrysler plant supervisor and his stepson. They ended up being sentenced to a $3000 fine, causing an uproar in the Chinese American community. Evidently the killers thought that Chin was Japanese American and blamed him for the success of Japanese carmakers in breaking into the American car market. This racist killing was another of a long history of violence against Chinese and other Asian Americans.