With the unemployment rate at a twenty-eight-year low of 4.5
percent, and discussion of discrimination unpopula in this
post-affirmative action era, scant attention has been focused on the
unemployment rate gap and the differential status of African American
workers. But yes, there is still an unemployment rate gap, and it
widened — not narrowed — in the face of economic prosperity.
Instead of the traditional 2:1 relationship between Black and White
unemployment rates, in August the Black unemployment rate was 9
percent, 2.25 times the White rate of 4 percent.
Wage gaps remain as well. The Washington, D.C.-based Economic
Policy Institute issued an early copy of its State of Working America
this past Labor Day. According to EPI, the 1997 hourly wage for White
women was $10.02, compared to $8.49 for African American women. The
wage gap has worsened over time: in 1989 the White female wage was
$9.84, while the Black wage was $8.76. Regardless of educational level,
White wages grew from 1989 to 1997, while wages for African Americans
fell.
College-educated African American women saw their wages drop 3.2
percent in the last five years, while White women who were college
graduates saw their wages grow by 4.4 percent.
Among men, the situation was somewhat different, although gaps
remain. White men earned $18.20 an hour, compared to the $12.92 that
African American men earned. Overall, men saw their wage levels drop in
the 1989-97 period, but African American men saw their wages drop more
precipitously. However, among college-educated men, there was slight
wage growth — with Black men’s wages growing twice as rapidly as White
men’s from 1989 to 1997. Nevertheless, White men earn $21.45 to the
$16.53 that Black men earn. Further, wage growth among White men was
far more pronounced than that of Black men in the past five years —
when White men’s wages grew by 2.5 percent, and Black men’s by just 0.1
percent.
While the data clearly indicate that college-educated African
Americans do better in the labor market than their noncollege-educated
counterparts, there is far more demand for workers in low-paying
industries than for workers in higher paying jobs that require a
college education.
Income data make it clear that there are limits in looking at
unemployment rate data alone. It also makes it clear that the rules of
“tight labor markets” do not seem to work for African American workers.
If standard laws of supply and demand dictate our economic reality,
then wages for African American workers, especially the
college-educated, would be rising more rapidly than those for Whites.
Instead, wages fell and the gap widened in the 1989-97 period.
