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Title: The Crisis of African American Unemployment Requires Federal Intervention

Citation Type: Conference Paper

Publication Year: 2012

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Abstract: The problem of joblessness is a deep and persistent one for African Americans. Since as early as 1960, the black unemployment rate has been about twice the white rate. What policies can be pursued to eliminate this disparity and achieve full employment for black workers? Given the inability of the normal workings of the private sector to solve this problem over the last five decades, only strong action by thefederal government will be able to address it. On occasions of deep economic downturns, the federal government has engaged in job creation. Most recently, in response to the Great Recession, the federal government has actively worked to create jobs. The persistent plight of high unemployment in many of Americas communities should be seen as a crisis as serious as the episodic deep national recessions.The federal government should support the following in high-unemployment communities: (1) the direct creation of public sector jobs, (2) sectoral job training programs that are coupled with strong job placement programs, and (3) wage subsidies for hiring the unemployed. These three policies in combination should bring large numbers of jobs to blacks who are disproportionately likely to reside in high-unemployment areas.

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Authors: Austin, Algernon

Conference Name: Fourth World Conference on Remedies to Racial and Ethnic Inequality

Publisher Location: Minneapolis, MN

Data Collections: IPUMS CPS

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Race and Ethnicity

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