Blacks Left Out of Bush's Economy
Saturday, April 9, 2005 at 11:59PM
TheSpook
April 10, 2005

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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]
Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).
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