Black unemployment is much higher than white unemployment in NY – 05/01/2023 – Market

The gap between unemployment rates for black and white New York City residents is now the widest this century, surpassing even the widest gap during the Great Recession, according to a new report.

In the first three months of the year, the unemployment rate for black New Yorkers rose to 12.2%, the highest among all groups, while the unemployment rate for white residents dropped to 1.3%, the lowest since 2000. The report was released on Thursday (27) by the New York City Business Center at The New School. The overall unemployment rate among New Yorkers was 5.3%.

New York City’s numbers are out of step with the bigger picture of the United States. The national unemployment rate among black Americans was 5.4% in the first quarter of the year, and the rate among whites was 3.2%. The national numbers include black Hispanic job applicants, while the New York data does not.

Black and white unemployment rates in New York City haven’t diverged continuously for at least a year in about 25 years, and that’s happening at a time when black unemployment across the country is approaching new lows, he said. James A. Parrott, co-author of the report and director of economic and fiscal policy at the Business Center.

The widening gap now threatens the city’s recovery from the pandemic, potentially exacerbating income inequality in one of the world’s most expensive cities.

The clear racial differences in unemployment stem from a number of factors, including differences in the types of jobs black and white New Yorkers work, racism in the hiring process and historical differences in professional qualifications that are rooted in past discriminatory policies, they said. experts.

From 2020 through the end of 2021, with some of the strictest Covid-related rules in the country, 310,000 New Yorkers lost their jobs due to permanent business closures, and another 406,000 due to business downsizing, Dr. Parrott.

But the difference in unemployment is not fully explained by these losses. The sectors that suffered the most were “face to face” businesses such as retail, construction and hospitality. These losses disproportionately affected Latino workers, who regained jobs faster than black New Yorkers.

And some of the industries that created the most jobs in New York last year were technology and finance, leading to disproportionate gains for white and Asian job seekers, Parrott said.

The report used seasonally adjusted data, following a method adopted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

After white and black unemployment rates fell throughout 2021, the black citizen unemployment rate started to rise again in the first quarter of 2022, while the white rate continued to fall. The difference between the two has more than doubled since then, from 5.2 percentage points to 10.9 percentage points, Dr. Parrott said. The last time the unemployment gap came close to this was during the Great Recession, when it reached 10.3 percentage points from the first half of 2009.

“This kind of sustained divergence has never happened before,” at least in this century, Parrott said. “Race-based discrimination is a big part of it,” he said, noting that data shows that black job applicants are often among the last to be chosen for jobs.

The city’s Economic Development Corporation, which uses a different method of analysis, reported on Friday (28) that the unemployment rate for black residents increased to 10.4%, while the unemployment rate for whites fell to 2. 5%.

In a statement, Mayor Eric Adams said that since taking office last year, New York City has created more than 250,000 jobs in the private sector.

“But this opportunity has not been shared equally, and we are taking aggressive action to rebuild an equitable economy that helps New Yorkers who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic and addresses the high unemployment rate among black New Yorkers,” he said.

City and state policies to spur job growth have not focused enough on the hardest-hit communities, said Barika Williams, executive director of the Housing and Neighborhood Development Association, a nonprofit housing and economic justice coalition.

“Recovery is not happening evenly across the city,” she said, especially in black-majority neighborhoods.

“The fact that we now have a larger unemployment gap than we had with Covid is shocking,” she added.

Ronnie Coaxum, 60, said he was fired in 2020 from a position in the food and beverage division of the Marriott Marquis hotel in Manhattan, where he worked for 36 years. The job search has been difficult; on Thursday, he drove from his home in the South Bronx to a job center in Harlem, looking for work.

“I’ve been doing temporary security jobs…” he said. “I’ve been doing maintenance work, just jumping around.”

He was not surprised by the growing racial disparity in unemployment rates. “It’s always been like this,” he said. “I feel it in job interviews, but I just have to be myself. I don’t let it bother me.”

The job search has also been difficult for younger people. About 17% of New Yorkers in the workforce between the ages of 18 and 24 were unemployed, the report found, with young black people disproportionately represented in that group.

For black men with prior criminal convictions, the search can be doubly difficult, said Christopher Watler, executive vice president of the Center for Employment Opportunities, a professional development agency for people with criminal records.

Raliek Mitchiner, 22, who was convicted as a minor, said he has not received return calls from several jobs he has applied for since 2021. “When they hear the name Raliek, they automatically assume I’m black,” he said. “Nobody knows I’m a good worker, I’m a nice guy, and that sucks.”

Mitchiner started working as a paid intern in January at the Employment Opportunity Center, and also works the night shift as a support specialist at a mental health facility in the Bronx.

The first position was only open to him because of his previous conviction. “I had to get into trouble for work,” he said. He got the second one thanks to a relative who nominated him for the role.

On Thursday, Zsanay Anderson, 19, was at the Department of Labor’s office in downtown Brooklyn, waiting for an update on her unemployment claim, which she had filed six weeks earlier.

“They didn’t help,” she said. “They just said they’re still reviewing it.”

Anderson lost his job in March as a case manager for a nonprofit social services agency, where he helped connect homeless people with shelters and mental health services. She lives in a domestic violence shelter in Flatbush with her mother after they fled a physically abusive relationship in North Carolina last year.

In North Carolina, Anderson was working as a restaurant manager and preparing to start college for a two-year degree. She said she intended to enroll in college in New York and hoped to be able to move from a shelter to a dorm.

But first she wants to work. “I have a lot of experience,” she said, citing previous roles in customer service and childcare.

The search for a new job was “awful” until earlier this week, she said, when she got a call from a social services provider in Brooklyn.

Your next stop would be to visit the employer’s office for fingerprints and background checks.

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves