Friday's numbers show black unemployment is 14.1 percent. What can be done?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, African American unemployment, which is hovering around 14 percent, is nearly double the national average for white people. So, what are the five things that the president, Congress or another entity need to do to increase employment figures in the African American Community?
1. Invest in Public Education:
Not only does education provide a foundation for future opportunities, but public dollars and investment will contribute to increased employment within the educational fields, whether K-12 or within higher education as a whole.
Additionally, a robust array of supervised before-school and after-school enrichment programs help parents stay in their jobs knowing their children are being cared for, and also keeps children on a path to higher education.
2. Build Better Job Training Programs
With the loss of manufacturing jobs and an economy based in information technology and service, there needs a concerted effort to prepare future generations for not just employment, but careers with decent wages. Changes to our educational system and increased availability of training programs will enhance employment opportunities. Currently, there are hundreds of thousands of skilled jobs that are going unfilled by Americans due to a lack of proper continued education. Gone are the days where one could get by on an assembly line without knowing how to run a computer.
3. Open Up The Suburbs
There is a dearth of cities with vibrant, sustainable downtown economies that would support a mass of middle class workers. There needs to be more access to well paying jobs, no matter where they occur. “Opening up the suburbs” might include several policy options, but the two most important are transportation and housing.
Regional transportation policies must be realigned to facilitate the access of central city workers to suburban employment centers, and building affordable housing in the suburbs is essential, so that low-to-moderate-skilled workers, with limited incomes, can live in greater proximity to the location of 90 percent of the region’s entry-level job openings.
4. Stop Discrimination
The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission and others agencies committed to equal opportunity must do a better job of curtailing racial discrimination. Unemployment rates reflect the persistence of racism within our society. Various studies have documented that “black sounding names” lead employers to call perspective black employees with less frequency.
5. Reform the Criminal Justice System
Mass incarceration, and its desperate impact on African American communities, has had a dramatic impact on employment. Ending the war on drugs, and ending the lifetime sentences that prevent formerly incarcerated individuals from working an array of jobs, would change the job prospect for thousands.
Posted By: DAVID JOHNSON
Thursday, September 20th 2012 at 2:46AM
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