Gains During The 1940s And 1950s
In 1940, the Census Bureau began to collect data on individual incomes, so we can track changes in black income levels and in black/white income ratios in more detail from this date forward. Table 4 provides annual earnings figures for black and white men and women from 1939 to 1989 . The big gains of the 1940s, both in level of earnings and in the black/white income ratio, are very obvious. Often, we focus on the role of education in producing higher earnings, but the gap between average schooling levels for blacks and whites did not change much in the 1940s , so schooling levels could not have contributed too much to the relative income gains for blacks in the 1940s . Rather, much of the improvement in the black/white pay ratio in this decade simply reflects ongoing migration: blacks were leaving the South, a low-wage region, and entering the North, a high-wage region. Some of the improvement reflects access to new jobs and industries for black workers, due to the tight labor markets and antidiscrimination efforts of the war years.
Table 4: Mean Annual Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers
Aged 20 and Over
| 16135.65 | .95 |
Table 5: Years of School Attended for Individuals 20 and Over
What Does This Indicator Measure
Unemployment measures the percentage of working-age residents who are not working and report that they are looking for work and available to take a job if offered one. Working age is defined as over the age of 16. In 2016, there were 12,114 unemployed residents of St. Louis, which translates to an unemployment rate of 7.1%.
Explaining Racial Differences In Cyclical Responses
Thus far, the discussion has focused on racial differences in labor market transitions through the business cycle. A natural topic of interest is whether differences across races in the skills they bring to the labor market or their types of employment help explain these patterns. In the CPS data, information is available regarding the characteristics of the individuals in the sample as well as their occupations and the industries in which they are employed. In this section, we again restrict the analytical sample to those who are in the labor force in each month in order to examine the influence of individual and employment characteristics on these racially differential patterns in labor market transitions.
The approach taken here is to interact the business cycle variable with the education, industry, and occupation controls. As they are included in the estimations, their influence on the racial business cycle response can be observed. If the magnitude falls , this would indicate that the factor increases the racial differential in business cycle responsiveness.
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Despite Junes Positive Jobs Numbers Black Workers Continue To Face High Unemployment
The Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report for June, released today, showed a continuation of the steady economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Nationally, 850,000 jobs were added last month, while the unemployment rate ticked up slightly, to 5.9%, after falling from 6.1% in April to 5.8% in May.
This recovery, however, continues to be uneven across racial lines. Black workers had Junes highest unemployment rate, at 9.2%. Table 1 and Graph 1 show the U.S. unemployment rate by race for April, May, and June 2021.
Transitions From Unemployment To Employment
Panel B of reports linear regression estimates for the probability of exiting from unemployment. Specification 1 reports estimates for the base equation, which includes a dummy variable for black along with the business cycle control. Specification 2 includes an interaction between the dummy variable for black and the business cycle control. Results from these two models indicate that black men are less likely than whites to move from unemployment to employment even after we control for education, occupation, industry, and other individual characteristics.
Specification 3 again excludes the controls for age, education, industry, and occupation. By contrasting these results with those for Specification 2, the influence of the covariates on the estimated transition probabilities can readily been seen. Again, the exclusion of age, education, industry, and occupation from the equations has little impact on the reported parameter estimates.
Specification 4 includes interactions with periods of falling unemployment. Because the parameters associated with those interactions are statistically insignificant, there is no evidence that black men have a different degree of responsiveness than white men to periods of falling unemployment. In these estimates, black men have a lower probability of moving from unemployment to employment, which does not appear to be related to the business cycle.
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Unemployment Rate During Covid
Data shows that certain groups have been more affected by job loss than others.
The national unemployment rate was 14.7% in April 2020, evidence of the economic toll that the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shutdowns have had on the economy. The downturn has affected the employment of different racial, ethnic, and gender groups differently.
Based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics , 20.2% of Hispanic or Latino women in the labor force were unemployed in April, more than triple the 6% without jobs in March. The unemployment rate for Hispanic or Latino men jumped from 5.1% in March to 16.7% in April. For Black men, the unemployment rate more than doubled from 7% to 16.1%. The rate rose from 5.2% to 16.4% for Black women.
White, non-Hispanic men also had their unemployment rate triple from 3.7% in March to 12.4% in April, which is the lowest unemployment rate among groups that BLS breaks down by race, ethnicity, and gender.
Reconstruction Era And Jim Crow
African Americans quickly set up congregations for themselves, as well as schools and community/civic associations, to have space away from White control or oversight. While the post-war Reconstruction era was initially a time of progress for African Americans, that period ended in 1876. By the late 1890s, Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws to enforce racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Segregation, which began with slavery, continued with Jim Crow laws, with signs used to show Blacks where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat. For those places that were racially mixed, non-Whites had to wait until all White customers were dealt with. Most African Americans obeyed the Jim Crow laws, to avoid racially motivated violence. To maintain self-esteem and dignity, African Americans such as Anthony Overton and continued to build their own schools, churches, banks, social clubs, and other businesses.
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Black Canadians Less Likely To Be Self
Some population groups face greater barriers to self-employment and entrepreneurship than others, or are more concentrated in industries or occupations where this type of work is less common.
Employed Black Canadians were less likely to be self-employed than non-visible minority Canadians overall in January 2021. At the same time, the self-employment rate among Black men was nearly twice as high as the rate for Black women .
4 Min Read
The United States saw the widest gap in unemployment rates for African Americans and whites in five years in June, underscoring an uneven nascent recovery from historic job losses triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.
Jobless rates for both groups fell in June, but the rate for whites came down at a much faster rate. The white unemployment rate fell 2.3 percentage points to 10.1% from 12.4%, while the rate for Blacks dropped 1.4 points to 15.4% from 16.8%, according to data released by the Labor Department on Thursday.
At 5.3 percentage points, the gap is now the widest since May 2015 and exposes an important economic component of racial inequality at a pivotal moment in U.S. race relations. The country has been rocked by nationwide protests over police brutality against African Americans in recent weeks, following the death of a Black man in police custody in Minneapolis.
For a graphic on Black vs white unemployment:
For a graphic on The African American jobless rate:
Not Included In The Data
The data does not include estimates based on fewer than:
- 30 survey respondents for data covering all ethnic groups together
- 100 survey respondents for data broken down by ethnicity
This is to protect peopleâs confidentiality and because the numbers involved are too small to make reliable generalisations.
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Are There Any Signs Of Progress
The percentage of the working age black population that is employed has also nearly rebounded since the recession to almost 58%.
Though the level remains lower than the previous record and lower than the roughly 60% for whites, the gap between the two races is smaller than it once was.
The narrowing comes as the share of the US working age population that is employed has fallen dramatically for all races, with an especially sharp drop occurring during the recession.
The decline, still not fully understood, has been explained by a mix of factors, including opioid addiction, automation and early retirements after job losses during the recession.
The white population is aging more quickly than the black population, which may explain part of the recent convergence.
The rebound among black workers also suggests they are less deterred by the low wages that have characterised many of the new jobs, Mr Spriggs says.
Wage growth was relatively strong in January. But as the president’s precipitate celebration of unemployment reminded, it is prudent not to read too much into one month’s figures.
Black Youth Unemployment Rate Of 40% Similar To Time Of Brixton Riots Data Shows
Guardian analysis shows young black workers hit disproportionately hard by Covid pandemic
Young black workers have been hit disproportionately hard during the pandemic, according to Guardian analysis, with more than 40% unemployed three times worse than white workers of the same age.
Forty years on from the Brixton riots, which spread across the UK during a recession in which black people lost their jobs in disproportionate numbers, experts are warning that coronavirus has exposed deep-rooted inequalities that still exist in the employment market.
The black youth unemployment rate was the same in the last quarter of 2020 as in the early 1980s, around the time the riots took place.
Between October and December 2020, 41.6% of black people aged 16-24 were unemployed the highest rate since the last financial crisis, Guardian analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics reveals. Unemployment among white workers of the same age stood at to 12.4%.
Before the pandemic, between January and March 2020, 10.6% of young white people were unemployed compared with 25.3% of young black people. Nine months later, the unemployment rate among young black people had shot up by 64.4% compared with 17% for their white counterparts, the ONS figures show.
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Figure : Transitions Among Employed Workers By Race Marchapril
Source: Current Population Survey, MarchApril Basic Monthly data from IPUMS-CPS.
|
Blacks |
|
14.6% |
Analyzing what happened with workers on temporary layoffthose who thought they would be called back to work within six monthsalso shows racial disparities. Figure 3 shows that as the pandemic continued, a higher percentage of white workers were called back to work each month compared to Black workers. Examining individuals who downgraded to permanent layoff shows a similar story: As the pandemic dragged on, a higher percentage of Black workers reported being permanently laid off than did white workers.
Trends Among White Workers
In the fourth quarter of 2018, the white unemployment rate was lowest in South Dakota and highest in West Virginia , as shown in the interactive map and underlying data table, which present state unemployment rates by race and ethnicity.
Table 1 displays changes in state unemployment rates by race and ethnicity from the fourth quarter of 2007the last quarter before the Great Recessionto the fourth quarter of 2018. The white unemployment rate remained most elevated above its pre-recession level in Wyoming, at 1.2 percentage points higher than in the fourth quarter of 2007. The white unemployment rate is at or below its pre-recession level in 45 states. The largest declines in white unemployment since the end of 2007 have occurred in Michigan , Missouri , and Rhode Island and Hawaii . The white unemployment rate is above but within 0.5 percentage points of its pre-recession level in Arizona and the District of Columbia.
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Transitions Into And Out Of The Labor Force
A major concern is that focusing narrowly on employment to unemployment transitions does not capture the complete effects of worsening or improving labor markets. As the economy worsens, one might expect a higher probability of movement from employment and unemployment to nonparticipation, and black and white men may differ in their likelihood of these responses to the business cycle. It might also be expected that during periods of tightening labor markets, more movements directly from nonparticipation to employment would be observed and that those transitions also might differ by race.
As the scope of the analysis is shifted to movement into and out of the labor force, the sample is expanded to include all black and white men ages 2555. contains transition probabilities between employment, unemployment, and nonparticipation over the entire sample period 19892004 separately for whites and blacks as well as for the combined sample. Several interesting patterns emerge. First, a larger percentage of blacks move from employment to nonparticipation than whites. The average probability of moving from employment to not in the labor force for blacks is .016, which is only slightly lower than the average probability of moving from employment to unemployment. Thus, excluding this transition from an analysis of black-white differences in labor force behavior over the business cycle is potentially an important omission.
Trends Among Asian Workers
Asian unemployment rate estimates are available for 11 states, and data on the change in Asian unemployment rates since the fourth quarter of 2007 are available for eight states. The Asian unemployment rate was lowest in New York and highest in Washington . The Asian unemployment rate was at or below its pre-recession level in California, Hawaii, Nevada, New York, and Texas. In three states the Asian unemployment rate was above its pre-recession level: New Jersey , Washington , and Illinois .
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Trends Among Hispanic Workers
Hispanic unemployment rate estimates are available for 23 states and the District of Columbia, and data on the change in Hispanic unemployment rates since the fourth quarter of 2007 are available for 16 states. In the fourth quarter of 2018, among states, the Hispanic unemployment rate was highest in Washington , Pennsylvania , Arizona , Connecticut , and Oregon . The rate was lowest in Georgia and Oklahoma .
The Hispanic unemployment rate is at or below its pre-recession level in 11 states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and Texas. The Hispanic unemployment rate was most elevated above its pre-recession level in Washington .
In two states the Hispanic unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate: Georgia and Oklahoma . The ratio of Hispanic unemployment to white unemployment was highest in Nebraska , Virginia , and Connecticut and Pennsylvania .
Great Migration And Civil Rights Movement
Despite discrimination, drawing cards for leaving the hopelessness in the South were the growth of African-American institutions and communities in Northern cities. Institutions included Black oriented organizations , churches, businesses, and newspapers, as well as successes in the development in African-American intellectual culture, music, and popular culture . The Cotton Club in Harlem was a Whites-only establishment, with Blacks allowed to perform, but to a White audience. Black Americans also found a new ground for political power in Northern cities, without the enforced disabilities of Jim Crow.
The and the conditions which brought it into being are credited with putting pressure on presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson put his support behind passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which expanded federal authority over states to ensure Black political participation through protection of voter registration and elections. By 1966, the emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from 1966 to 1975, expanded upon the aims of the civil rights movement to include economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from White authority.
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Black Workers In Us Saw Gains In June But Racial Gap Persists
People waiting in a line are seen reflected in a car window outside a newly reopened career center for in-person appointments in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., April 15, 2021. REUTERS/Amira Karaoud
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But the unemployment rate also ticked up, suggesting that many people who started looking for jobs haven’t found one yet. read more
The labor force participation rate for Black workers rose to 61.6% in June from 60.9% in May as more people worked or searched for new jobs. The share of Black workers who were employed in June also rose to 55.9% from 55.4%. In contrast, the labor force participation rate for white workers dropped slightly.
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The more rapid rebound in labor force participation for Black workers suggests that unemployment benefits may not be deterring Black people from looking for work, William Spriggs, an economics professor at Howard University and chief economist for the AFL-CIO labor group, wrote on .
The unemployment rate for Black workers rose slightly to 9.2%, up from 9.1% in May and mirroring a similar move in the overall unemployment rate, which rose to 5.9% in June from 5.8%.
We are still facing inequality, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said during a Reuters interview on Friday. There is work to be done coming out of this pandemic to really make sure the recovery is equitable.
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