I've said it before and I'll say it again: I can't stand them editorially speaking but the NYT is hands-down the best paper in the world at taking advantage of modern web technology.
This shows, in almost painful detail, the bifurcation of the economy I was talking about earlier. Those of us who are college educated with a few years of experience could be excused for not knowing we are in a recession (4.3%). New graduates have it tougher (8.X%). Folks without high school diplomas are in total crisis.
(The highest unemployment rate, to the surprise of essentially no one: black men 15-24 with no degree. Its 8.5%... sorry, missed a digit, 48.5%.)
If you are a black man between 15-24 with no high school diploma, changing the color of your skin (to white) has more positive impact than getting that high school diploma.
I would guess that the important factor is instead your real-life social network. Most of those young, white, uneducated men are found in rural areas where there is a strong sense of community and people help out and get jobs for each other.
Whereas the young, black, uneducated men are more likely to live in urban areas where they have a weak social network that can't help them get jobs, so the best thing they can do is to become friends with people who have jobs, and if you flunked out of high-school, that's very, very difficult.
This is anecdotal, but my neighbor's son is a black 35 year old male lacking a high school education and had a BS drug charge. It is very difficult for him to find a job, after all, who wants to hire an ex-con?
Also, his social network makes him very likely to be harassed by police.
I think the decriminalization of drugs will help the inequality, or at least fix a symptom.
Update, just found out my neighbor's son got a job working at the Port of Oakland for $8.50/hour. He also has a high school education (not that it has a big bearing on the employment rate of his peers).
What I have seen is that there are a lot of white people doing well without college education. But this doesn't mean that they do not receive any education.
A lot of white people (in my part of the world) learn their parent's occupation. A good example is farming - a farmer will learn his sons how to farm. Or estate agents.
So they have an aweful lot of skills transferred to them (just through a university that doesn't grant degrees ;) )
What's even more interesting is that changing your race to Hispanic has an almost identically positive impact as changing to white.
Are we actually that much more discriminatory (as a society) against blacks as compared to hispanics? Is this purely racism, or is something else at work? Perhaps it has to do with the ratio of passport/green card holders between the two ethnicities, and the economic advantages of hiring non-citizens in low-end jobs?
The results are clear though:
White men 15-24, no highschool: Unemployment 25.6%
Black men 15-24, no highschool: Unemployment 48.5%
Hispanic men 15-24, no highschool: Unemployment 25.8%
I think you are right that the difference is immigration. A lot of hispanics at that age range and with no high school education are migratory farm workers that come to the US with jobs. Bad jobs but nevertheless jobs.
And of course nobody will hire black people for those jobs. Those jobs are so hard and badly paid that they can only be performed by impoverished scared immigrants.
And as far as racism goes I think there is a difference between the way hispanic and black men are treated. Racists usually fear young black men and consider them all violent criminals, so they would not give them jobs. As far as hispanics, the usual racist stereotype of the hispanic male is somebody that is good for a low wage menial job. So racism does not really prevent hispanics from getting jobs, just good jobs.
Racism is a sketchy explanation. As of a year ago, native-born black americans had 50% more unemployment than foreign-born blacks.
These racists make very fine distinctions: "I don't like African Americans. Nigerians and Jamaicans are ok, though. So I'll interview black people, but if they don't have a foreign accent..." [makes a 'get out of here' motion]
I'm not trying to keep Americans out of jobs here, but isn't it good to require that foreign born people have jobs before they come here? I mean, I assume you are talking about immigrants. Why would you not want them to have some sort of employment related Visa before they get on the plane to come here and live?
This statistic, to me, says that the government is doing something right. Again, not trying to open up an immigration discussion, just saying that this statistic is a good thing. In general you want native unemployment to be higher than foreign born unemployment or you have a problem with your immigration program. In America Native unemployment is higher across every demographic, which is excellent in my opinion.
Just my two cents. I'm not an immigration expert or anything, but I am smart enough to know that I want the employable immigrants.
Uh, dude, I'm not making any immigration-related argument. All I'm saying is that those racist employers seem to have a really narrow kind of racism: "we hate black americans, but not black haitians or senegalese."
It's probably not racism then, but, umm, culturalism.
We don't have good vocabulary yet for distinguishing between race, culture and nationality because for most of history, these were very strongly correlated.
I would wonder if there is a fear of hiring black men for extremely poor paying manual labour jobs for fear of the perception of slavery & racisim too.
I think fear of litigation is probably a significant factor. I have a friend who practices labor and employment law and he's kept on retainer at a few big companies to field calls such as "can we fire this person and not get sued?".
They literally have a point system. Race, sex, sexual preference and disabilities (basically any protected class) are all assigned a certain number of points.
Regardless if you're trying to fire someone for cause, if they are in some dangerous combination of protected classes (watch out for disabled black lesbians) and you want to minimize legal exposure, they'll advise you to keep them and put them in a position where they can do no harm to company.
He has one firm who has an employee who has sued them five (!) separate times for racial discrimination (according to my friend, anytime the person gets a bad review or reprimanded). They can't get rid of the person for fear it'll look like retaliation.
Actually, that's a generalized problem with firing protections of any kind; the harder you make it to fire anyone, the less likely they are to be hired in the first place. Another case where second-order effects can end up dominating the end results. "At-will employment" sounds like a worker disaster if you only consider first-order effects, but in my opinion it is actually the preferable scenario for a worker if you consider everything.
These second order effects are a big problem in Europe. The governments there make it very expensive to fire anyone; typically around 6 months wages for anyone laid off, I think. As a result, companies are loath to hire new workers, even when an economic upswing is under way. Result: chronically high unemployment rates and young people who can't get jobs and don't understand why, not to mention increased risk aversion for companies.
I wouldn't jump to racism right away, the system doesn't break down the numbers by locations. For instance rural people with no degrees may have an easier time finding jobs, whereas those in a city may not. I don't know the breakdown of rural hispanic, white, black, to the city but that might be able to explain it.
Am I the only one who thinks breaking this down by race is misleading? Why don't they have it broken down into industry? Saying this is due to racism is a huge leap from the correlation here. A more apt comparison would be people with the exact same skills and background applying for very similar jobs.
Well, I guess that would be too hard. Let's stick to dividing everyone into little groups to make this easier for our brains.
I know what you mean. A black colleague of mine was recently let go from my company and he found new employment pretty quickly. I wonder, if you graphed unemployment for developers would there be such a large difference between blacks and the other races?
Am I the only one who thinks breaking this down by race is misleading?
No more misleading than breaking it down by age.
A more apt comparison would be people with the exact same skills and background applying for very similar jobs.
That just hides all the people who would never get the skills or background to apply for those jobs because of their race. These statistics are profiling a society, not judging whether a particular interviewer has bias.
I assume that the dominant factors are socio-economic rather than racial. The poverty rate for black americans is three times that what it is for white americans. I suspect if the unemployment rates were broken down by most recent household income that the correlation between race and unemployment would be much weaker than the correlation between previous economic status and unemployment.
In other words, I expect that the unemployment rate for the black middle class isn't a whole lot higher than for the white middle class.
How to grow larger minority middle-classes is a much deeper societal problem and is much less subject to relatively instantaneous fluctuations like unemployment rates.
That's exactly correct. I had a nice chat about this with my gf recently... her mom is the traditional "southern woman" aka "socially acceptable racist." (her words, not mine. 'I'm just a 'southern girl' i can't help it)
So I shared an insight with her that I'm not certain of but that makes sense to me:
Since Nixon, income growth in inflation-adjusted dollars for the average American has actually fallen. From something like $46k median income in 1970 compared to $44k today.
Anybody who grew up in the less affluent suburbs knows this just in their families and neighbors.
The real prosperty that actually created the middle class in this country--the real upward mobility--that happened between 1945 and 1965.
And it just so happens that while that was happening, most white Americans still treated blacks like 2nd class humans (at worst) and 2nd class citizens (at best).
They missed out on the last big push of economic mobility.
Lets hope that we all get a 2nd one in our lifetimes.
While this is a very large and complex issue, one of the major forces in that "big push" was veterans taking advantage of the GI Bill. Black veterans had a much harder time using its benefits, though - most universities were still segregated, for example.
I saw that. I thought that was crazy too! There is actually a demographic in the US for whom there is little incentive for education with respect to financial success. I would never have believed this without being presented with the data. It is so antithetical to my beliefs in my country that a large part of me wants to question the EDIT(sp):veracity of the NYT data. Even though I know that data is probably accurate.
I'm don't understand what you're saying. For both white and black, the employment rate approximately halves when you pass each of the two levels of employment. What discrepancy are you talking about?
The comment we're responding to is the one above that talks about young black males being better off changing their color to white, than getting their high school diploma.
This entire thread of discussion is on the topic of @kalendae's comment. The fact that the data indicates that it is literally better for a young man to be anything but black, than it is for a young man to be black, but educated. I was saying that what this data shows is contrary to what I believe about the country. That is, I believed that color doesn't matter, only education does. But color does matter, and to me, that is surprising. That's all I'm saying.
Good point. Motivation/evaluation to benifits only applies to things the person can change.
Sure, you might be better off if you were white or a woman, but it is cheaper to get an education (well, here in the UK it would be cheaper, I hear education can be expensive in the US...)
I suppose this is a good way to look at it. The REALITY is these guys can only do what they can do. The fact that what they can do may not help them pull equal to whites is beyond their control.
The issue is that I was raised to believe that all Americans, regardless of race, have the same access to opportunities. Then, when I grew up, graduated college and took a commission in the USMC, this idea was further drummed into me. But this data is saying that this is untrue. Setting up serious conflict in my mind. Which is what my original comment was about.
Put another way, if you change the things you can change, you can make yourself the equivalent of anyone was my view of the US. But this is not the case, even if these guys get an education their chances are still slimmer than other guys without an education.
The general feeling of acceptance here is somewhat shocking to me as well. This is not what I thought America was about, or the American people. Don't get me wrong, I know there are bigots, but I thought they were in the minority. Perhaps more naivete on my part.
In short, I find it totally unacceptable for a black high school grad to have less of a chance at opportunities than a white non graduate. Saying that if blacks get educated they can do better than non educated blacks, though not as well as non educated whites, is lunacy. It's like saying, this is the best that YOU can expect in this society, so be happy, there is no problem.
Why does that seem so acceptable to so many people here? Or maybe it is just the few who are talking the loudest I don't know. Or perhaps a lot of these people commenting are not even American. Which I would bet on, given the content of some of these comments.
It could also be that I have been living in the uber-privileged la-la land of an ex-military officer.
This country has tried to right many (atrocious) wrongs and things have improved largely, but no, all things are not yet equal. Imagine a large maze of (forgive the analogy) rats, some gray, some brown. The maze has bits of food and even material for shelter building. If all rats were released into the maze at the same time, all things being equal - physical sizes evenly distributed etc., each color of rat would survive equally as well. Now imagine releasing only the gray rats into the maze, holding the brown ones back, and imagine all these rats are intelligent - they can pass on information about the maze like where to find food to their offspring, so they become trained. Let's say you conducted this experiment over a long period of time, several years, and then one day you released the brown rats. You can see they would be at a disadvantage, even though they might have the same physical opportunity to the food and materials, the gray rats have "set up shop". Slaves in the U.S. were freed, but essentially just "released". (the 40 acres and a mule was never awarded) This is a crude analogy, but can show how such statistics can exist.
Do some research. This was a promise made by a Civil War General to a specific bunch of people which was later rescinded by the president. There was no general law or promise that such would be provided to every freed slave. It happened for a brief period, in a relatively small location (Georgia) And it happened 150 years ago.
Aside from whether somebody was put into harm's way because his great-great-great grandfather missed out on the free mules, I just wanted to clarify that historical point. It's one of those historical revisions that seem to grow with the retelling.
Yes, I know it was rescinded (after Lincoln's assassination) before it could be extended to the rest of the subset of freed slaves. I was pointing out the "imbalance of the maze" was apparent even back then.
The issue is that I was raised to believe that all Americans, regardless of race, have the same access to opportunities.
I think that is a very important message to send out. You have to get people to believe that they can (and should!) succeed, even once the opportunity is there, otherwise they might not try. [1]
Saying that if blacks get educated they can do better than non educated blacks, though not as well as non educated whites, is lunacy.
Worth pointing out that the numbers, though best for the white group, are not as bad as that.
For men and women, ages 25-44:
none high school college
white 17.5% 8.1% 3.7%
black 26.9% 14.0% 7.4% [2]
So, for each step up in education, the black person has a better chance than the white person on the level below. 26.9% is still a scary large number, though I'd like to think that the no-high school group is only a small proportion of the overall population.
(Also, yes, I've only been to the US a couple of times, but I'm not sure in which that affects my interpretation of these numbers.)
[2] See what I did there, ignore half the data to make my point clearer? Because I felt bad about it, I'm going to include the whole set here:
none high school college
hispanic 13.1% 9.6% 4.9%
other 13.6% 9.4% 4.8%
white 17.5% 8.1% 3.7%
black 26.9% 14.0% 7.4%
Now, before I did that, I hadn't noticed: if you're not going to finish high school, better make sure you're not white or black.
Eh, and there goes my unqualified optimism too. If you're hispanic/mixed/other and didn't finish high school, you've still got a better chance than a black person who did. Oops.
[3] And another point: I'd like to see the relative sizes of these "race" groups. I'm sure in the long term, that "mixed" group is going to become the largest.
Looks like you slowly talked yourself around to my conclusion. Black people, especially the young ones, seem to have a really unfortunate position. It seems qualified optimism is the only reasonable response to this data. At least if they get educated, they can do somewhat better for themselves. Though lesser educated people of other races will probably do better.
Also, for more good news, take a look at the numbers for blacks compared to others where the age is 15 - 24.
It would be interesting to see what the salaries and job types are for all of these groups: education might help significantly there (or might not; I have no idea).
Also, your other point is interesting as well. If a young black guy can get an education, let's say a high school diploma. He will have less of a chance of getting a job than a white man who does not have a high school diploma, we know that from this data. BUT, will the black guy with the high school diploma make more money than the white guy without a high school diploma IF he can find someone willing to give him a job? That's a great question. Prior to being presented with this data I would have been eager to get the answer. Now, I almost don't want to know, that answer could be even MORE depressing.
The figures show black, Asian and other ethnic minorities are twice as likely to be unemployed, half as likely to own their home and run double the risk of poor health, compared with white Britons. [2] (from 2001 census, sorry, most recent I could find)
In my experience, it's not so much about being black as the environment you grow up in. There was an interesting study done by a professor of anthropology from University of California at Berkeley.
Shaker heights was full of affluent African Americans, and yet there was still a large acheivment gap between the black students and white students. The study concluded that the parents didn't involve themselves in their children's education as they figured living in an upper middle class society did the work for them. Meanwhile the kids held themselves back so they wouldn't be "acting white".
You can read about the study here, it's quite facinating:
For what it's worth, I'm black and grew up an upper-middle-class household in a mostly white middle-class area. At 27 I've had no trouble finding a good job and in fact just recently turned down a high-paying job offer at a fortune 500 last month. Race has never been an issue for me, one way or the other.
You "wish" more blacks could be more like him? How many black people do you have intimate conversations with to base your opinion on how "most" of them are like?
I'm curious - what's your opinion on what other races who aren't white should be more like? I mean in your perfect world where white people just dictated how everyone should behave.
The curve for young black educated men was actually the most shocking for me. It doesn't follow the smooth, more predictable trending that most other groups show.
They should have also broken it down by the income level.
> They should do this kind of graph for health care coverage.
Some topics are not appropriate for public discourse as far as large media corporations are concerned. We are not supposed to discuss the number of bankruptcies / year due to health care costs, or how health insurance is linked to employment and since there is a high un-employment, there is probably a large number of un-insured individuals as well. And how on the first accident any one of those uninsured will probably blow through their life savings, credit card accounts and eventually declare bankruptcy.
Yes, but I would propose breaking it down by their level of median annual income over the last 5-10 years. This would give a number, for any given individual, would tend to change gradually over a lifetime and would not be significantly affected by a year or two of unemployment.
This would show how much of the unemployment was affecting only those who were already losing in the employment game.
I think that women are more likely to leave the workforce when it is difficult to get a job & enter it when it is particularly attractive. Extended maternity breaks, home makers etc. Leaving the workforce is leaving the graph, neither employed or unemployed.
Maybe, or perhaps or is because they are white and college educated. After all, white male college graduates between 25 and 44 have the next lowest unemployment rate of any demographic group.
Do they count those on maternity leave or who work fulltime homemaking as being either not unemployed or employed at home? Sacking women at the lower end of this age range could lead to sexual discrimination suits - "she heard I was trying for a baby then I was sacked, ..." to avoid maternity payments?
Be that as it may, do you seriously think if you were the exact same person, simply hadn't finished high school and/or were a different race, you'd be a different person?
I just don't see how race affects anything at all, maybe this is more a specifically American thing? Official education likewise seemed a giant waste of time to me.
In education, yes, of course I would. I'm not an incredibly motivated, dynamic person who could make stuff happen whatever the circumstance, those people are incredibly rare, that's why they're famous, like Richard Branson. I worked hard at school, went to a top college, went to work in high tech, fairly typical "geek" life. Would I be the same person now if I'd been stuck in the small town I grew up in, working a dead-end job, surrounded by people who were going nowhere?
I don't think my race has disadvantaged me professionally, but it certainly had an effect in that small town when there was at most one non-white kid in every class... My education got me out of that world and I've never looked back.
If you don't see it, that just means you haven't spent a lot of time studying it.
The concept of someone who's the same exact you but grew up under radically different conditions is a red herring -- by the age of 12, there'd be more differences than similarities, and that's before the things that you're thinking of as "racism", job interviews and police harrassment and the like, have even started.
Yes, I think my life would have been very different. I probably wouldn't have gotten my first job since I got it through campus recruiting. The people I met there have again influenced me and has led me to where I am today and a lot of the views I have.
Of course, in some ways, I would be the same person, but to claim that I would be essentially the same had I not finished high school is, in my mind, pretty absurd.
With respect to race... it is something that happens in the US. I can't speak for other countries though.
Then what has influenced your character?
If I could pick a few attributes which I felt most influenced my character, race and education level might not be at the top but surely there amongst.
Both directly and indirectly through how others perceive me and through how I perceive that others perceive me.
you also need to take things like underemployement into the equation, the main reason there aren't any jobs for people without a college degree, is because people with college degree are taking jobs at 7-8 bucks an hour just to put food on the table
That is probably tied into immigration and welfare policies. An illegal worker from Mexico will pick potatoes for $4/hour, while a poor black person who is a US citizen will probably refuse the same job even at $8/hour (or whatever the minimum wage is these days). A black person will probably rely on welfare. An illegal worker does not have access to the same level of welfare.
A second part of the equation is that paying someone $4/hr is illegal, so the employers who are willing to pay at that rate will usually not consider hiring a US citizen for fear of a lawsuit somewhere down the line.
Your argument does not explain the discrepancy between the unemployment rate for white people 15-24 and black people in the same age range, unless you are implying that the young white person will take the job at the same pay rate as an illegal worker would.
PS: If you work at Walmart $8/her is par for the course
The people with the highest rate of unemployment however, black men 15 - 24 without high school diplomas, are not eligible for welfare. In all 50 states, welfare is only given to care givers. That is, to people who have custody of children. In most cases, women.
That data kind of blows the, 'blacks will just use welfare' theory out of the water. Unless you meant, 'black women with children will just use welfare'. Which, come to think of it, is probably what you meant. But it just seems that the serious unemployment is borne by and large by black men.
Are you sure? In my country people live of wellfare even though they do not directly get it.
It is usually a parent with old age pension / disability pension that supports 3 or four people. So even though a person doesn't get welfare he still lives of it.
There are also people who routinely work for short periods of time and then claim unemployment benefits.
Yeah, I can't speak to how much of this is going on.
You make a good point there.
I only have the data to show that able bodied black guys 15 - 24 do not receive welfare directly. So that is all I can say. You are right though, how many of those guys live with grandma, or mom, who does collect some sort of welfare. I can't say. My suspicion, yes . . . my prejudice, is that it probably happens a lot. That said, again, I have no data.
I just looked up my state's (Illinois) welfare application[1] and it doesn't mention anywhere that having dependents is a necessary condition to receive it. If being a care-giver is the policy, they do a good job of hiding it.
Also, those children have to come from somewhere so why wouldn't they qualify as dependents if you have court ordered child support payments?
Sorry, I originally put this comment in the wrong place.
@dschobel
In Illinois the same rules hold true.
The reason the men are not eligible is because they are not the custodial parent. That is, their children do not live with them. The custodial parent in most of these cases is the mother.
The reason the rules are not made more prominent in the application I cannot speak to. It is tucked away at the bottom of the application in the fine print legalese however:
"As a condition of eligibility, if I am approved for TANF Cash and/or medical assistance for myself and my children, I understand that I may berequired to cooperate with child support enforcement. Cooperation includes establishment of paternity and/or support enforcement andmodification of child support orders. I assign and give all my rights, title and interest of child support and medical support to the IllinoisDepartment of Healthcare and Family Services as long as I receive TANF Cash/or medical assistance. I understand and agree that any childsupport payments paid through the clerk of the circuit court and through the State Disbursement Unit (SDU) may be forwarded to the IllinoisDepartment of Healthcare and Family Services as long as I receive TANF Cash.
I understand that if I apply for TANF Cash and/or medical assistance for my children only, I am not required to cooperate with child support enforcement, but I may request services."
Translation, the woman gets welfare, and the state of Illinois will take aggressive action against the father for the purposes of collecting child support. Which, I think, sounds appropriate in that situation. I would guess most states have this same child support enforcement component. If you read through the application fully, you will find a lot of gotchas, with respect to immigration status, custodial disposition of children, etc. etc.
But we're digressing. My only point was that the, generally non custodial, father is not eligible to collect welfare. Further, it is an open question as to whether or not some of the young men in question even have children. I suspect the majority do not at 15 - 24 and poor. I suspect an even smaller minority of this group are custodial parents. Now I don't have data to back up that assertion, its just my impression, or prejudice if you like, that young black guys are generally absentee fathers. Not saying that's the case, just that that is my impression.
In any case, yeah, no way they would get welfare in any of the 50 states. In fact if they went in and filled out this application their SSN would probably be flagged for child support enforcement.
Looked through the requirements and yeah, it still looks like GA or whatever it is called, is for the sick, injured, or infirm. Here are the requirements:
"To qualify for GA Transitional Assistance (GA-TA)
DHS must decide that you are not employable. To be considered not employable, you must meet one of the following criteria:
* Are 55 or older and have had little or no income during the past year.
* Have a serious disability and an application or appeal pending with SSI.
* Have to take care of another person in your home because of that person's physical condition.
* Are homeless because of a court-ordered eviction or domestic violence, or because of a fire or a natural disaster that happened in the last 6 months.
* Are under age 20 and you attend high school or an equivalent vocational or training school full-time.
* Regularly take prescription medicine to control seizures, high blood pressure, or diabetes.
* Are temporarily unable to work because of illness or incapacity."
So black guys 15 - 24 still don't qualify. This system, to me, seems appropriate as well, if you are old or physically incapable of working, the government gives you some sum of money. Not a lot, but something. That sounds reasonable to me.
At any rate, it is a little misleading to imply that welfare is available to people without families. Yes, it is available to the elderly and the infirm if they do not have a family. But it is not available to the individuals we are discussing. Black men aged 15 - 24 without high school diplomas.
cost of living does not allow you to live on $8 an hour. $8/hour means you need 2-3 jobs just to feed your kids.
If you don't have 2-3 jobs, you have to make ends meet with $16K a year. Remove the $12K that you'll pay for rent in pretty much any of the major cities. And you have $333 to live on. That won't even cover your basics like gas/electricity and water.
I live a fairly adequate lifestyle making around $16k a year (I'm a college student and only work ~25/hrs per week). That covers rent, gas, food, utilities, and entertainment. Granted, I don't have kids to support and I have a roommate, but it is in fact possible to live on a very modest income.
There are many cities where rent is significantly cheaper than 1K per month. In those cities where it isn't even the most menial of jobs usually pays slightly more than minimum wage. I agree with the other poster it wouldn't be fun to live on 16K a year but it is certainly workable.
There are many cities where rent is significantly cheaper than 1K per month. In those cities where it isn't even the most menial of jobs usually pays slightly more than minimum wage. I agree with the other poster it wouldn't be fun to live on 16K a year but it is certainly workable.
Wow, the term Politically Correct means nothing to you. Lawrence Summers got pilloried for less. I'm not sure you can use the term "illegal" workers any more in polite company. I think the New York Times prefers the word "undocumented." And I'm not going to touch the rest of that paragraph. (Mock outrage and major hand-wringing, and a slight whiff of pretentiousness that goes along when I cluck my tongue in a condescending manner.)
