Study: Jobs picture isn't pretty in US cities

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Sun Belt metropolitan areas, such as Tampa, Miami and Las Vegas, are no longer the havens for African-Americans to find employment that they used to be, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute.

In a comparison of pre- and post-recession unemployment rates among African-Americans, EPI looked at black communities across 31 metropolitan areas.

The results show increases in greater metro areas, including Detroit, with a 4.1 percentage-point change increase, Las Vegas, 3.5, Los Angeles, 4.5, and Jackson, Miss., 3.5.

These percentage-point changes increases are from 2009, the end of the recession, to 2010, post-recession.

theGrio: Does wardrobe discrimination keep blacks jobless?

“Technically, [the recession] is over,” said Algernon Austin, director of EPI’s program in race, ethnicity and economy. “But we’re still suffering from extremely high unemployment and we’re seeing jobless rates close to and over 20 percent among African Americans.”

He told theGrio that African-American communities are in extreme distress right now.

Milwaukee stands out as the worst off for African-Americans (in Rust Belt cities, like Detroit and Cleveland) on all of the unemployment measures examined in the report. The Midwestern metropolitan also had the highest black-to-white unemployment disparity in 2010 at a 3.8 black-to-white unemployment ratio for the area, which includes Waukesha and West Allis.

But the numbers may just be a fraction of the whole picture.

“Those are official numbers and they don’t include large amounts of people who are no longer in the workforce [system],” said Flozell Daniels, Jr., CEO of Foundation for Louisiana.

“The official figure is 8 or 9 percent unemployment but when I drive around here I see so many people looking for work,” Daniels told theGrio.

Organizations, like the Foundation for Louisiana, continue to support struggling communities. After Hurricane Katrina, the foundation formerly known as the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, spearheaded relief efforts to more than 30,00 residents and facilitated the re-opening of 3,012 small businesses.

Today, one the foundation’s priorities is to provides grants to strengthen the nonprofit sector, increase wealth and encourage entrepreneurship, especially among minorities, in a state that has one of the largest African-American populations in the South.

“When a black or brown people owns a business, they own up to five times more money, even if it’s a two-person shop,” said Daniels. He went on the say that African-American entrepreneurship has a ripple effect because more often than not, they “hire people who look like them.”But with African-American unemployment today mirroring that of the Great Depression around percent, black families are struggling. Dr. C. Nicole Mason of the Women of Color Policy Network says the families are suffering from a ripple effect.

“For African-Americans, we’re less likely to have assets or savings to have the savings to ride out the storm for a month or even a week,” Mason told theGrio.

As reflected in the EPI study, African-Americans were facing high unemployment rates before the recession began in December 2007.

With the consideration of possible factors, research consistently finds that racial discrimination continues to play a role. In Louisiana, Daniels says that persistent unemployment still plagues educated African-Americans, who are less likely to get a call back from employers, in comparison to less-educated whites job applicants.

The study shows high 2010 back-to-white unemployment ratios not only in Milwaukee but also in Minneapolis, Baton Rouge, Memphis and Baltimore at 3.6; 3.4; 2.7; 2.6, respectively.

Austin says the most urgent need is a substantial jobs bill, and that need, should be the takeaway point from the research.

The nation still waits to see if Congress will pass Obama’s $447 billion American Jobs Act, and according to some, it will be one step in a great solution.

“The Obama administration should have targeted programs for communities who have been hard by unemployment,” Mason said.

If enacted, economists project that Obama’s jobs plan will add up to 1.9 million jobs. The plan also proposes to cut the payroll tax in half for 98 percent of businesses and help entrepreneurs and small business get access to capital.