May 04, 2005
Why Has Black Unemployment Risen (Yes, Risen!) In
The "Bush Boom"?
Recent employment reports show
steady, if undramatic, increases in hiring. Some
Administration pundits talk, without irony, about a
"Bush Boom."
The "jobless recovery" may
be
over for some—most notably
Hispanics. But the story is very different for
Black Americans. Blacks are faring worse than they
did at a similar stage in the
previous recovery at the end of Bush I’s term.
Amazingly, thirteen quarters into the "Bush Boom,"
Black unemployment has risen.
Here are the comparative results
for the first 13 quarters of this economic recovery as
compiled by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI): ["African
Americans in the current recovery," April 6,
2005.]
Black unemployment generally
responds to changing economic conditions more quickly
than white unemployment, reflecting the
over-representation of Blacks in
manufacturing and other
highly cyclical sectors of the economy. The trend
held in the early 1990s. It abruptly ended with Bush II’s
recovery.
Why?
EPI lists the usual suspects: a
relatively weak demand for labor (i.e., a
jobless recovery), the decline of manufacturing; and
(it claims) a "labor
market
[that] still discriminates against minorities,
particularly African-American males."
But if racial discrimination is
such a factor, why has Hispanic job growth outpaced
that of whites? (For
example, Hispanics got 60 percent of the new jobs
created in March; in the entire Bush II era Hispanic
employment has grown 14.3 percent vs. just 0.3 percent
for non-Hispanic employment growth.)
In fact, discrimination is
the best explanation for persistent Black unemployment -
but not the sort of discrimination EPI has in mind.
Arguably the
most racist policy in this country for the past
quarter century has been immigration policy. The
onslaught of poorly educated, mainly Hispanic immigrants
has
stymied good faith efforts of African Americans to
climb up the economic ladder.
Since 1990 immigrants have been the
predominant driver of U.S. labor force growth. The
immigrant share of labor force expansion has rocketed
from 34 percent in the 1990-1995 period to about 60
percent in the most recent three-years for which we have
data (2000 to 2003). (See
Table 1.)
In 1990, after more than 200 years
of
nationhood, the foreign-born share of the U.S. labor
force was 9.4 percent. Thirteen years later it was 14.4
percent.
In some parts of the country a
decade of
heavy immigration has swept Blacks out of jobs that
were traditionally theirs. In Los Angeles the janitorial
industry, once a source of
well paid work for unionized Blacks, is now
dominated by
non-unionized Latinos. According to the Census, the
employment of Black Americans as
hotel workers in California dropped 30 percent in
absolute numbers in the 1980s. In contrast, the absolute
number of immigrants with such jobs rose 166 percent.
Similar stories are told in the
garment industry, restaurants,
hospital work, and public service jobs.
Jobs that Americans won’t do? Tell
that to
unemployed African-Americans.
Edwin S. Rubenstein (email
him) is President of
ESR Research Economic Consultants in Indianapolis.
