Black and minority ethnic groups suffered a “triple whammy of threats” to their mental health, incomes and life expectancy that left them more vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic when it took hold earlier this year, according to the UK government’s official statistics body. Research from the Office for National Statistics into the wellbeing of different ethnic groups in the UK showed that 27% of people from black backgrounds reported in April finding it difficult to make financial ends meet, compared with fewer than 10% among most white groups. The Office for National Statistics said its latest assessment of the impact of the pandemic on different groups showed “how people’s circumstances before the pandemic could affect their experience during the first national lockdown”. More people from black and minority ethnic (BAME) groups worked in precarious and poorly paid jobs, leading them to be among the most worried about their household finances going into the pandemic in March. Once the government lockdown took hold, people from BAME groups were more likely to work longer hours and less likely to be employed and eligible to be furloughed than their white counterparts. Glenn Everett, a statistician at the ONS, said: “Financial resilience was lower among black African or other black households before the pandemic, for example, which would explain why these groups found it harder to manage financially during lockdown. Perhaps unsurprisingly, mental health deteriorated across most ethnic groups during lockdown.” Those in the Indian ethnic group reported both greater difficulty with sleep due to worry in April during the initial period of lockdown and had higher scores than other groups on a measure of self-reported mental health difficulties. “White Irish respondents were more likely than those from white British, Chinese and other Asian or black, African, Caribbean or black British groups to report an increase in loneliness or continuing to feel lonely often between 2019 and April 2020. The general secretary of trade union umbrella body the TUC, Frances O’Grady, said the pandemic had exposed “the structural racism of the UK’s economy yet again”. She said: “BAME workers have faced a triple whammy of threats during the pandemic. “Today’s figures show that BAME workers were less likely to be earning enough before the pandemic to avoid hardship during lockdown. BAME workers are more likely to be in low-paid, insecure jobs, where they have been more exposed to coronavirus and more likely to die. “Today we learned that BAME workers’ mental health has suffered the most during the Covid-19 outbreak. It is past time for the government to act.” About half of working-age adults of white British and other white ethnicities who were in paid work reported a decrease in their weekly hours in April compared with before the pandemic, the ONS said.