{"id":5418,"date":"2015-06-08T10:27:35","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T15:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/?p=5418"},"modified":"2015-10-13T13:16:02","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T18:16:02","slug":"when-government-shrinks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2015\/06\/08\/when-government-shrinks\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Communities Hit Hard When Government Shrinks"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_5419\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5419\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/files\/2015\/06\/stamps.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-5419\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/files\/2015\/06\/stamps-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"Do declining government jobs chip away at the stamps' promise?\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/files\/2015\/06\/stamps-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/files\/2015\/06\/stamps-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/files\/2015\/06\/stamps.jpg 1277w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5419\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Do declining government jobs chip away at the stamps&#8217; promise?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>That&#8217;s likely true for a lot of reasons,\u00a0but one is just coming to light:\u00a0For many African-Americans, working for the government has provided a gateway to the middle class. \u201cCompared to the private sector, the public sector has offered black and female workers better pay, job stability and more professional and managerial opportunities,\u201d sociologist <a href=\"https:\/\/www.soc.washington.edu\/faculty-details\/jdlaird\">Jennifer Laird<\/a> tells <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/05\/25\/business\/public-sector-jobs-vanish-and-blacks-take-blow.html\"><em>The New York Times<\/em>. The civil service,\u00a0<\/a>delivering mail, teaching, operating public transportation, and processing criminal justice have historically provided steady income and opportunities to climb the economic ladder&#8212;often without an expensive college degree.<\/p>\n<p>The recession\u2019s recovery has not brought back employment at the local, state, and federal levels, though, and it\u2019s causing struggle in black communities in particular. Population growth has also meant higher competition for ever scarcer public sector jobs. African-Americans once benefitted most from government employment, so cutbacks and layoffs hit them the hardest. Laird describes black government workers\u2019 situation as a \u201cdouble-disadvantage\u201d:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>They are concentrated in a shrinking sector of the economy, and they are substantially more likely than other public sector workers to be without work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s likely true for a lot of reasons,\u00a0but one is just coming to light:\u00a0For many African-Americans, working for the government has provided a gateway to the middle class. \u201cCompared to the private sector, the public sector has offered black and female workers better pay, job stability and more professional and managerial opportunities,\u201d sociologist Jennifer Laird [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2028,"featured_media":5419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[33120,131,34,1005,355,4075,39111,848],"class_list":["post-5418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inequality","category-race","tag-civil-sector","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-employment","tag-government","tag-middle-class","tag-race","tag-unemployment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/files\/2015\/06\/stamps.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2028"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5420,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5418\/revisions\/5420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}