Article of the Week

The Black Jobless Picture: From Bleak to Bleaker
& Out of Sight

by Carl Bloice, Black Commentator.com

When I heard there was a sizable increase in black community joblessness between April and May I mentioned it to a few people and in return got that so-what-else-is-new? stare. “Every month, when unemployment rate data are released, the news for African Americans is bleak,” wrote educator Julianne Malveaux four years ago. Some things change, that doesn’t. The figures that tell the story are found in the eighth or ninth paragraph of a story on the government’s jobs report. But not much further is said about it and the matter disappears. “Out of Sight,” was the way New York Times columnist, Bob Herbert, put in last week

It helps - or hurts - to put faces and lives on the numbers, however. If nearly 10 percent of African American are out of work that means one out of every 10 black people has no reasonable means of earning a living and if they have dependents no way to adequately care for them.

I am constantly reminded that the Bureau of Labor statistics are not particularly reliable, that the situation is usually worse than they evidence. This is particularly true when it comes to the number of people who have given up looking for work and dropped out of the active labor market. (more...)