{"id":38024,"date":"2011-08-02T10:00:05","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T15:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/familyinequality.wordpress.com\/?p=3009"},"modified":"2012-02-20T16:19:37","modified_gmt":"2012-02-20T21:19:37","slug":"comparing-black-and-white-job-loss-in-the-recession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/08\/02\/comparing-black-and-white-job-loss-in-the-recession\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparing Black and White Job Loss in the Recession"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Cross-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/familyinequality.wordpress.com\/2011\/08\/01\/employment-unequal\/\" target=\"_blank\">Family Inequality<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The news each month is usually on unemployment rates, weekly <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/06\/22\/unemployment%E2%80%99s-greenjobs-porn-google-mind\/\">filings of new claims<\/a>, layoffs and new hiring. And the <a href=\"http:\/\/pewsocialtrends.org\/2011\/07\/26\/wealth-gaps-rise-to-record-highs-between-whites-blacks-hispanics\/\">Pew report<\/a> on widening race\/ethnic wealth gaps was eye-opening. But you can take the measure of the recession overall maybe best with the employment rates \u2014 how many people have jobs? By that measure, the news is flat-to-down without letup. The <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/07\/29\/a-recession-for-white-americans-a-depression-for-black-and-latino-americans\/\">Black-White discrepancy<\/a> in the trends is increasing.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the employment trend for White and <a href=\"http:\/\/familyinequality.wordpress.com\/tag\/black-women\/\">Black women<\/a>, showing that Black women had higher employment rates before the recession, but they\u2019ve fallen more than twice as much as White women\u2019s (a drop of 5.7% versus 2.4% as of June):<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/familyinequality.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/07\/bwwemp711.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3010\" src=\"http:\/\/familyinequality.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/07\/bwwemp711.jpg?w=500&amp;h=548\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"438\" \/><\/a><em>Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics data.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>For men, the gap is bigger and the lines further apart, so I added a ratio line to help show the gap. Black men\u2019s rate has fallen 5.6%, compared with 3.8% for White men:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/familyinequality.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/07\/bwmemp711.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-1\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3011\" src=\"http:\/\/familyinequality.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/07\/bwmemp711.jpg?w=500&amp;h=505\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"404\" \/><\/a>The <em>Christian Science Monitor<\/em> has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/USA\/Society\/2011\/0726\/Recovering-US-job-market-is-leaving-black-men-behind\">an article<\/a> reviewing some of the factors that contribute to the unemployment gap for men, including education, incarceration and discrimination. And the Center for American Progress has more detail in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/issues\/2011\/07\/black_unemployment.html\">this report<\/a>, which argues that declines in manufacturing and public employment are increasing the Black-White gaps especially in this recession.<\/p>\n<p>What the broader statistics don\u2019t show as well is the tenuousness of the jobs Black workers have compared to Whites generally &#8212; working for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/pss\/10.1086\/209888\">weaker firms<\/a>, in more <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unc.edu\/~pnc\/AJS04.pdf\">segregated jobs<\/a>, as a result of a <a href=\"http:\/\/muse.jhu.edu\/login?uri=\/journals\/demography\/v039\/39.3mouw.html\">racialized sorting process<\/a>,\u00a0which put them at higher risk of job loss in a recession (even without\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/ann.sagepub.com\/content\/634\/1\/39.short\">discrimination in firing<\/a> decisions, which there is, too).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Employment is flat to down, with increasing inequality.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/stats.wordpress.com\/b.gif?host=familyinequality.wordpress.com&amp;blog=10222819&amp;post=3009&amp;subd=familyinequality&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,36,12498,55,778,285,1760,1757,76],"class_list":["post-38024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-economics-great-recession","tag-gender","tag-intersectionality","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38024"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38031,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38024\/revisions\/38031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}