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After the release of the U.S. Department of Labor employment statistics for the month of April earlier this month, an editor in our New York office asked me what stood out to me.
Like most American labor reporters, it struck me that few jobs were created last month and that the report amplified the anecdotal claims of a worker. scarcity. I was so focused on the low number of people hired to work in leisure and hospitality that I never responded to the editor.
But along with the rest, he had overlooked a figure that worried him most: unemployment rose among black Americans. 9.7 percent, even while the aggregate unemployment rate was 6.1 percent. For whites, this rate was 5.3%.
In the year since George Floyd was assassinated, the United States has re-evaluated discriminatory practices in the workplace and the police, in housing and health policies, and even in infrastructure repairs. . But I wonder if these changes, while crucial, can significantly improve the lives of black people if economic reform is not prioritized.
Unemployment among black Americans is almost always double that of whites, a phenomenon attributed to disparities in educational opportunities and social networks, as well as to employment discrimination. Historically, the two figures tend to at least move in the same direction.
When the Covid crisis occurred more than a year ago, black Americans had just begun to benefit from a ten-year bullish market. At the time, the health crisis seemed to be targeting their communities and closing down sectors where their jobs were highly concentrated, including restaurants and retail, and killing them at disproportionately high rates.
It remains to be seen whether the growing recovery in the United States will also target black Americans, given their economic needs. they tend to be ignored.
White America began to emerge from the 2008 financial crisis in 2012, but Black America faced off double-digit unemployment for years afterwards. Some economists blame the Treasury department for the two-tier recovery, saying it allowed fears of Wall Street inflation to drive rate hikes before disadvantaged workers could return to the workforce.
Others say the slow recovery is another symptom of the neglect of the economic centuries of blacks in the centuries of the United States.
Shortly after the United States freed slave blacks in 1865, they did promised give them “40 acres and a mule” to guarantee their economic freedom (mules would have been loans). This never materialized. Instead, the subdivision system emerged, which kept newly freed people economically dependent on their former owners.
“I don’t think the black community has recovered from slavery,” says Trahern Crews, an organizer of Black Lives Matter Minnesota.
Crews says the government owes black Americans reparations for centuries in the form of direct payments to descendants of slaves and investments in schools and health organizations that serve black communities, similar to the $ 1.6 billion the United States paid the Japanese. Americans interned during World War II.
Proponents say reparations are the best way to bridge the growing wealth gap between black and white families in the United States. These policies are highly controversial, but have gained public support in recent years. The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill to establish a federal commission to explore the concept.
Ultimately, employment opportunity is the main issue for black Americans, according to Rashad Robinson, president of the activist organization Color of Change. “When we ask people what’s most important, they talk about jobs, they talk about pay, and they talk about being able to have a quality standard of living,” he says.
The Biden administration says it will not allow its Covid recovery plan to be developed as a last resort, and committed base their economic goals on the black unemployment rate rather than the aggregate one.
“Economic recovery cannot be completed if some communities remain,” says Janelle Jones, chief economist in the Department of Labor.
taylor.rogers@ft.com
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