Five Major American Cities Have Less than 50% of Black Male Residents 16 to 64 Years Old Working: Detroit - 43.0%, Buffalo - 43.9%, Milwaukee - 44.7%, Cleveland - 47.7%, and Chicago - 48.3%
Employment rate for black males in
Milwaukee only 45 percent
January 24, 2012
MILWAUKEE - Only about 45-percent of working age black men in Metro Milwaukee had jobs in 2010. That's according to a study of census data by UW-Milwaukee.
A report released yesterday showed that the area's black male employment was 53-percent just before the 2008 recession hit. And in 1970, almost three-of-every-four black males age 16-to-64 had jobs - just 12-percentage points less than white men. Now, that racial gap is almost 33-percent, the largest in the country. And only Buffalo and Detroit had lower percentages of black males working than Milwaukee in 2010.
Marc Levine, head of the UWM Center for Economic Development, says the region has had a long, steady decline in manufacturing jobs over the last four decades. Also, the UW report blames what it calls "mass incarceration."
It said around five-thousand working-age black males a year have been jailed or imprisoned in Milwaukee over the last decade - including a growing number of non-violent drug offenders. The report also blames inadequate transportation from the city to the suburbs, where factories have done better than in the city in recent years.
Percentage of Black working-age (16-64) males employed in forty selected cities:
- Detroit 43.0%
- Buffalo 43.9%
- Milwaukee 44.7%
- Cleveland 47.7%
- Chicago 48.3%
- St. Louis 51.3%
- Philadelphia 51.7%
- Phoenix 52.0%
- Indianapolis 52.6%
- Cincinnati 52.6%
- Richmond 52.7%
- Memphis 53.2%
- Pittsburgh 53.3%
- Hartford 53.3%
- San Francisco 53.3%
- Miami 53.4%
- New Orleans 53.5%
- Oakland 53.8%
- Omaha 53.8%
- Las Vegas 54.2%
- Birmingham 54.3%
- Newark 54.5%
- Columbus 54.7%
- Jacksonville 54.8%
- Los Angeles 54.8%
- Kansas City 55.1%
- Seattle 56.3%
- Charlotte 56.5%
- San Diego 57.1%
- Portland 57.4%
- New York 57.4%
- Baltimore 57.5%
- Houston 58.3%
- Nashville 58.4%
- Denver 58.8%
- Atlanta 59.0%
- Minneapolis 59.3%
- Boston 59.7%
- Dallas 61.0%
- Washington, D.C. 66.6%
Only 10% of all African-American teens are working in Illinois with only only 7.4% of low-income African-American teens employed.
Employment statistics just as bad as great depression or worse for African American teens!
FROM THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Job search not working for vast majority of teens
Black, low-income youths struggling the most, with employmentrate at historic depths
By Corilyn Shropshire and Cheryl V. Jackson
January 24, 2012
Anjelica Pickett, 17, has been searching for a job for about a year.
Despite making as many as five applications in a day during that time, Pickett, now a freshman at Truman College, said she's scored only one interview, with a grocery store. But that didn't pan out.
"It's kind of stressful,'' she said. "Growing up has been kind of hard. And getting everyday things like soap and stuff that people get everyday has been hard. I don't have like a billion aunts and uncles to ask for things."
Pickett's story isn't atypical in Chicago, where only 16 percent of teens held a job in 2010.
Nationwide, for those between 16 to 19, the employment rate has plummeted in the last decade, falling to 26 percent in 2011from 45 percent a decade earlier, according to a study that will be released Tuesday by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Boston's Northeastern University.
And in Illinois, teen employment was just under 50 percent 10 years ago. In 2011, it was 27.5 percent. The dismal numbers have prompted calls by youth advocates for more dollars for youth employment programs.
"Job-training and placement funding will help to reverse the deteriorating pictures over the past decade for African-American, Hispanic and low-income youth in particular," said Jack Wuest, executive director of the Alternative Schools Network, a Chicago-based, nonprofit education advocacy group that commissioned the study.
On Tuesday, Wuest, other policy leaders and education and youth advocates will gather at a forum at the Chicago Urban League to drum up support for the Pathways Back to Work Act, federal legislation that would provide $5 billion in training and employment programs for youth and unemployed and low-income adults.
"You could only classify this in one way: It's a massive depression in the labor market for teens," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies, the author of the study.
Teens 16 to 19 have been hurt more than any other age group in the labor market, said Sum. The younger you are, the more adversely you've been affected by the recession and other developments in the labor market, he said.
The job hunt is especially tough for teens who are African-American, Latino and poor.
For low-income and African-American teens, the employment rate during the past decade hit an all-time low: Just 10 percent of African-American teenagers are working, and the number dips to 7.4 percent for those who come from low-income families.
Chicago's Latino teens fared slightly better, with 19 percent working; the rate for those from low-income families declined to 14.2.
"That's what we consider to be the great social disaster," said Sum. "If you are black and/or low income, you run the greatest risk of not working at all."
In Illinois, white, middle-class teens are more likely to be employed, at 38 percent, than their black and Hispanic counterparts.
When they do find work, young people typically are confined to fewer sectors, including low-wage retail, fast-food and arts and entertainment jobs, Sum said.
"You'll rarely see a teenager working at a bank," he said.
Jobs are an important stepping stone for young people as they become adults, ensuring that they gain valuable social skills as well as strengthening the entire community fabric,said Alternative School Network's Wuest.
Moreover, teens whose parents are unemployed often have additional challenges entering the workforce because they are less likely to know about creating a resume, completing job applications and conducting interviews, said Marty McConnell, director of resource development at Alternatives Inc. of Chicago, a youth development agency.
"If your parents aren't working, they may not know how to help you with that sort of stuff," she said. |
