Unemployment

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July 11, 2011 | 2:49 PM | By

Five Factors Causing the ‘Decimation’ of the Black Middle Class

Alex Wong / Getty Images

The Rev. Jesse Jackson (L) hold the hands of Angela Walker (R) in Suitland, Md. after a rally against foreclosures in the hard-hit, majority-black county. Walker is recently unemployed and facing foreclosure.

The recession from 2007 to 2009 has hit nearly all sectors and communities in the American economy, but minorities, and particularly African Americans, may have been affected the most. Jesse Washington’s recent Associated Press story about how the recession reversed many of the economic gains that took the black community many years to attain contains some grim statistics: in 2009, the average black household had only 2 cents for every dollar of wealth held by the average white household, and in April 2010, black male unemployment hit its highest point since the government began tracking it in 1972.

“History is going to say that the black middle class was decimated,” Maya Wiley, director of the Center for Social Inclusion, tells Washington. “But we’re not done writing history.”

What has led to such extreme losses? Here are five factors contributing to the “decimation” of the black middle class:
FILED UNDER: History, The People, Black Middle Class, Economy, Housing, Recession, Unemployment
July 8, 2011 | 11:47 AM | By

Latest Government Job Cuts May Hit African Americans Hardest

 

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

The latest jobs report released Friday shows that unemployment has risen from 9.1 to 9.2 percent, with government jobs getting the most cuts. And such public sector losses disproportionately affect African Americans, given that a larger percentage of working black adults hold government jobs than working white or Hispanic adults [PDF].

June saw the loss of 39,000 government jobs. And the June unemployment rate for whites was 8.1 percent; for blacks, it was 16.2 percent; and for Hispanics, 11.6 percent. The huge public sector losses may be contributing to the disparity in unemployment rates, reports Huffington Post‘s Janell Ross:

The loss of government paychecks erodes one of the great equalizing forces at play in the American economy for more than a century. A government job has long offered a pathway for African Americans to sidestep discrimination that has impeded progress in the private sector, where social networks often determine who has a shot at the best jobs, say experts….

“Many of the black people you don’t hear about on the news, the black people who own homes, who can afford to send their children to college and have modest savings, many of them worked for some branch of government before the recession began,” said Steven Pitts, a labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education. “There is good reason to be very concerned about what will happen when this work disappears.”

D.C.’s unemployment rate was 9.8 percent in May. But the rates differ ward-by-ward [PDF]. The District’s poorest and nearly all-black wards saw May unemployment range between 16.8 and 24.9 percent. Conversely, the city’s wealthiest, and whitest, ward saw a May rate of 2.6 percent.

FILED UNDER: Government, Economy, Unemployment
May 31, 2011 | 4:25 PM | By

A College Degree Doesn’t Mean You’ll Get a Job, Especially if You’re Black

The jobless rate for black men ages 16 to 19 is 45 percent. The Washington Post chronicles the job hunt of one black male teen, Kenneth Roberson of Memphis. The recent Booker T. Washington High school graduate was a top-ranked student at his school, which was described by President Barrack Obama as one of the nation’s most inspiring.

For Roberson, the implications of 45 percent are more immediate and more personal. It means a 45 percent chance he will have to borrow money for school or risk forgoing his partial scholarship to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; a 45 percent chance that he will be stuck without a car in a house with his mother and four siblings, sleeping on a futon in the room he shares with his brother; a 45 percent chance that he will go “crazy or something,” he said, “because I hate sitting in the house and having that feeling of just waiting around and being worthless.”

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty

President Obama greets Christopher Dean during Booker T. Washington High School's May 2011 graduation ceremony. Obama called the school one of the country's most inspiring.

Roberson and his peers face an uphill battle in trying to find jobs to help pay for school. But what if he was a little older and already had his college degree — would finding a job be more difficult for him than for a white college graduate?

Colorlines has posted a number of illuminating graphics that indicate, yes: Jobless rates are much higher for black and Latino college graduates than their white peers. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the jobless rate for black college graduates under 25 was 19 percent in 2010. For whites, it was 8.4 percent. Colorlines reports:

Even among those who’ve made the right choices—be it finishing high school or loading up debt to get a college degree—jobless rates are shocking. And the longstanding racial disparity among college graduates has grown markedly worse in the course of the downturn.

In D.C. as a whole, the unemployment rate was 9.6 percent in April, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. But in predominately black Wards 7 and 8, it’s as high as 20 percent. And teens looking for work may be out of luck this summer, as the city’s summer jobs program faces funding cuts and will be accepting 8,000 fewer youth than last year.

FILED UNDER: Education, The People, Race, Unemployment