Blacks Left Out of Bush's Economy

April 10, 2005

• Black unemployment rates have been double-digit since 2002. [more]

New jobs have been popping up by the hundreds of thousands each month as the U.S. economy continues to gain momentum. But unlike the recoveries from the recessions of the early 1980s and 1990s, the prospects for black adults searching for work have been getting worse, not better, after three years of economic expansion. The situation carries implications beyond the lives of the disadvantaged. But in the current recovery, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for black men 20 and older is rising. In February it was 10.9 percent, up from 9.3 percent a year earlier. The jobless rate for black adult women was 9.1 percent last month, up from 8.8 percent a year earlier. In contrast, the unemployment rate for white men was 4.1 percent in February, down from 4.6 percent a year earlier. The jobless rate for white women was 3.9 percent last month, a decline from 4.2 percent in February 2004. In 1992, in the wake of another recession, the unemployment rate for black men peaked at 13.7 percent. By 1995, it was 7.7 percent. "High jobless rates, particularly among young black males, lead to greater crime, drug addiction and family breakups," said William Julius Wilson, director of the Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program at Harvard University. [more]

• The poverty rate for Blacks in 2003 was 24.4% 
  
• The poverty rate for Hispanics in 2003 was 22.5 percent
• Wealth is racially divided. 13.1 percent of white households had zero or negative net worth in 2001, while this was true for 30.9 percent of black households. The median financial wealth (holdings of stocks, bonds, cash, and the like) of blacks was a paltry $1,100; for whites it was $42,100. [more]
•  The unemployment rate for Hispanics dropped from 6.4 percent to 5.7 percent in March, according to recently released data from the U.S. Labor Department. [more]