A jobs-centered approach to African American community development​: The crisis of African American unemployment requires federal intervention | Economic Policy Institute

Unemployment rates for African Americans have been far higher than those of whites for the past 50 years, even in good times. In fact, since 1960 the black unemployment rate has been about twice the white rate. Had blacks had the same unemployment rate as whites in 2010, an additional 1.3 million blacks would have been employed.

Millions of African Americans live in communities that lack access to good jobs and good schools and suffer from high crime rates. African American adults are about twice as likely to be unemployed as whites, black students lag their white peers in educational attainment and achievement, and African American communities tend to have higher than average crime rates. These issues have been persistent problems.

Jobs are essential to improving African American communities. Increased employment would help people in these communities lift themselves out of poverty. In addition, because poor economic conditions are an important causal factor behind poor educational outcomes and high crime rates are correlated with high unemployment rates, creating job opportunities would help improve educational outcomes and reduce crime.

This paper outlines a plan for significantly increasing the number of jobs available to African Americans. The plan, which targets communities with persistently high unemployment, includes three main components: creation of public sector jobs, job training with job-placement programs, and wage subsidies for employers. Although the plan is constructed with African Americans in mind, it would also provide benefits to Latino, American Indian, and white communities in which unemployment has remained high.1

A precondition for implementing this plan is a U.S. economy with strong job growth and low unemployment. Unemployment in African American communities cannot be low while the national unemployment rate is high. Thus macroeconomic initiatives—such as infrastructure investments, aid to states, and a stronger safety net—are needed to restore the national economy, reduce the national unemployment rate, and create the conditions for strong job growth in the future.

Even when the national economy is good, however, conditions for African Americans are typically bad. Federal intervention to aid African American community development is necessary for the following reasons:

African Americans still reside mainly in separate and unequal communities. In 2010, in the 100 metropolitan areas with the largest African American populations, 62.5 percent of blacks would have had to move to achieve full black–white integration.

Parental unemployment, and not simply low income, has negative effects on children’s educational outcomes. Blacks are twice as likely as whites to have had 10 or more spells of unemployment over their prime working years.

Joblessness, although by no means the only factor producing higher crime rates in African American communities, appears to play a significant role.

Neither educational advances nor suburbanization by blacks has translated into reductions in the black–white unemployment rate ratio.

If a bold new approach is not developed to address the racial unemployment disparity, it is likely that African Americans will be condemned to unemployment rates that are twice those of whites into the foreseeable future.

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via A jobs-centered approach to African American community development: The crisis of African American unemployment requires federal intervention | Economic Policy Institute.