Unemployment Gap For African-Americans Leaves Experts Divided
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President Barack Obama speaks on unemployment. (Creative Commons)
The disparity in unemployment between certain demographics in the U.S., most notably between African-American and other Americans, is a problem agreed upon by consensus. But the opinions of experts, who are not quite as shocked by the data, paint a mixed picture of what has led to that problem.
While few say that the numbers are unremarkable, the contributing factors of unemployment inequality have experts a little more divided.
Alec Levenson, research scientist for the Center for Effective Organizations at the USC Marshall School of Business, says economic factors play a major role in creating the disparity.
“African-Americans on average have lower levels of education than the rest of the population, which limits their economic opportunities,” he said. “And even among people who have the same level of education, the quality of education that African-Americans receives tends to be lower than the quality of education of the rest of the population, which also limits their economic opportunity.”
Others see a personal agenda at work.
“In short, it’s racial discrimination, which is more intense against black male youth, who are seen as more threatening,” said James Devine, professor of economics at Loyola Marymount University.
Devine said he believes this is a systemic problem that exists within education, in term of which students go to each school. “It also reflects residential discrimination, which also hurts non-blacks with relatively low incomes, and the concentration of bad schools in areas [with a high concentration of black residents] because they have less money and thus less political influence," he said.
While Levenson said that discrimination plays a lesser role today, he didn't deny a certain element of ambiguity in the situation. “It is very hard to put a precise number on what part of unemployment differences are due to discrimination factors versus economic factors,” he said.
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The recession hit minorities the hardest and may have long-term effects given these new numbers, said Daniel Mitchel, former director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.
“Everybody is affected when the demand for labor falls ... and we haven’t had a very robust recovery and that hasn’t helped unemployment,” Mitchell said.
Devine said the recession may have exacerbated the unemployment gap. “The Great Recession – and more importantly the stagnation that’s been persisting and looks like it’s going to persist afterwards – intensifies all of these problems [of racial discrimination],” he argued.
Structural economic issues also play a role, Mitchell said. “The thing with people with lower levels of education is that manufacturing is at its decline ... so some job opportunities that were once available to people are no longer there,” he said.
Every expert interviewed by Neon Tommy downplayed the significance of October’s figures.
“I don’t want to put adjectives to one month ... when the problem has been around for decades,” Mitchell said. “
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“Unemployment rates are always higher among youth than adults; same for African-Americans as the rest of the population,” Levenson pointed out. “You need to compare African-American youth unemployment rates to non-African American youth unemployment rates, not to the overall population, for an accurate comparison.”
These numbers are not quite as daunting. The national unemployment rate for teenagers is 22.2 percent, less than two-thirds that of the rate for teenagers in the African-American subset of the same demographic.
When it comes to trying to fix the problem, experts said the best solutions to closing the gap come down to education.
“There’s all sorts of these remedies: changing levels of education will have an effect and jobs training programs,” Mitchell said.
Reach Staff Reporter Ben Kraus here.
