The nation’s economic crisis began in December 2007 and since then countless people have been laid off from their jobs, and are dealing with the daunting effects of this recession. Although the state of the economy affects everyone in one way or another, minority communities have been hit harder than the rest of the nation. White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, called the minority unemployment rate “shockingly and totally unacceptably high.”

Here are 5 shocking facts many people probably do not know about unemployment rates:

As of September 2010, the white unemployment rate is 8.7%, the Hispanic unemployment rate is 12.4% and the black unemployment rate is 16.1%. The black unemployment rate has steadily risen every year since 2008 and jumped recently from 11.2% to 15.9% in 2010. At the same time, however, the white unemployment rate has actually diminished. In 2008, it was 8.6%, but fell to 8.3% by 2010. There are 2.3 million people in jail that are not accounted for in the national unemployment statistics and studies found that incarceration depresses the total earnings of white males by 2%, Hispanics by 6% and blacks by 9% upon their release. As HuffPost’s William Alden reported: “Among lenders that went bankrupt in 2007, blacks were three times more likely than whites to receive subprime loans.” The unemployment rate for black male college graduates 25 and older is 7.8% as of August 2010. For white male college graduates, it is 4.4%.

In New York, minority based communities such as Harlem have consistently been hit very hard by the recession. Unemployment rates in certain Harlem districts were as high as 18% whereas the unemployment rates of whites in Upper Manhattan is between 4-5%. Unemployment rates are usually closely tied to factors such as education (regions of lesser high school diplomas tend to experience higher unemployment rates), language barriers and criminal backgrounds—factors that plague the Harlem community and hinder the reengagement of disconnected youth. There are also very few programs available to disconnected youth that utilize a combined education and workforce development approach.

The economic pain among minorities signals structural problems in employment opportunities such as labor market discrimination. In light of this, one reason for the high economic rates in minority communities is because little has been done to improve the inequalities of the economic experience between whites and minorities. Inequality also affects educated minorities—the unemployment rate for African American college graduates, for example, grew by 2.4% more than it did for whites and 0.4% more for Hispanics. Although the government has invested millions of dollars in creating jobs and spurring economic growth, more funds are needed to benefit minority groups who will continue to be out of work. Also, since the stimulus is designed to create jobs in the construction and manufacturing industries, training programs must be available to minorities to ensure that they can take advantage of these opportunities.

Source

by Betty Diop (Re:LIFE Writer/Columnist)

Pace University

B.A. Applied Psychology