The Unemployment Gap
Austin’s research indicates that there is a gap between African American and white employment levels even after taking into account educational achievement. Moreover, foreign-born Blacks face higher rates of unemployment than foreign-born whites, and Black teens face greater unemployment than their white peers.
“High unemployment across the board for Blacks indicates that there’s an element of racism to it,” says Steven Pitts, a labor policy specialist at the University of California, Berkeley. He says that racism in other sectors—housing, education, and the criminal justice system—compound the difficulties African Americans face in the labor market.
Austin points out, however, that bias is not the only factor undermining African Americans looking for work. Many companies don’t even advertise their openings.
“Finding a job to apply for does depend on who you know,” he explains. “Do you know someone who knows someone who knows of a job opening? Blacks are less likely to, and this certainly disadvantages Black workers.”
The growing number of companies that check the credit histories of applicants during the hiring process also makes African Americans more vulnerable. The jobless tend not to have stellar credit ratings because being unemployed makes it difficult to pay bills in a timely fashion. Accordingly, credit checks mostly disadvantage African American applicants as this group of job hunters is most likely to be unemployed.
“People need a good job to reestablish their credit or to put them in a place where they can maintain good credit,” Austin says. “If their credit history is used to prevent them from getting a good job, it’s a Catch-22.”
Although the New York Times did mention that credit checks exacerbate discrimination against the unemployed, it failed to mention how it affected African American job-seekers disproportionately.
The media also have not touched on the role of criminal background checks. A Huffington Post piece, “Obama: Discrimination Against Jobless ‘Makes Absolutely No Sense,’” never mentions unemployment among African Americans. According to Pitts, incarceration keeps a large number of African Americans among the ranks of the jobless.
“The media need to tell the stories behind the numbers, so you can actually get a sense of Black work life, what are people’s histories in the labor markets,” Pitts says. “Featuring real life experiences begins to humanize the problem.”
