PHILADELPHIA
Last hired, first fired: This generations-old cliché rings bitterly true for millions of America’s Latinos and Blacks, who are losing jobs at a faster rate than the general population during this punishing recession.
Much of the disparity is due to a concentration of Latinos and Blacks in construction, blue-collar or service-industry jobs that have been decimated by the economic meltdown. And Black unemployment has been about double the rate for Whites since the government began tracking those categories in the early 1970s.
But this recession is cutting a swath through the professional classes as well, which can be devastating to people who recently arrived there.
Since the recession began in December 2007, Latino unemployment in the United States has risen 4.7 percentage points, to 10.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Black unemployment has risen 4.5 points, to 13.5 percent. White unemployment has risen 2.9 points, to 7.3 percent.
Tatiana Gallego, whose parents were born in Colombia, was suddenly called into human resources and laid off from her job as an admissions counselor for a fashion college.
“The way people tried to explain it to me was, I was the last one hired so I was the first one out,” said Gallego, 25, who had worked there for 17 months.
