African-Americans are more interested than other groups in affordable education, people of color are more likely than Whites to pursue online or community college education and Latino workers are finding that they are more often relegated to hourly work as opposed to more frequent salaried employment than in the past.
These are among the most striking findings of a newly released study on people of color and the future of work and perhaps the most extensive study of its kind to date. The 36-page “Racial Differences on the Future of Work: A Survey of the American Workforce” was produced by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington-based think tank focused on issues affecting people of color.
The people behind the report are hoping it stirs conversation, particularly as the National Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People meet this week at annual conferences, and as 20 Democratic White House hopefuls prepare for their second debates next week.
The report is timely as the country gradually moves toward a majority-minority dynamic and with technology becoming more prevalent in society, Harin Contractor, workforce director at the Joint Center, said in an interview with Diverse.
Contractor wrote the report in conjunction with Dr. Ismail White, the center’s director of survey research.
Perhaps the finding with the strongest reverberation is that African-Americans want opportunities that will lead them to education and to work. That runs counter to a stereotype that people of color do not want to work and instead prefer to live off of government assistance.
The Joint Center report “completely runs counter to that,” Spencer Overton, president of the Joint Center, told Diverse. “This is the data; this is what the data said.”
