In an article that appeared in The Wall Street Journal titled “Time Not on Side of the Jobless,” Ben Casselman explains how there have been some improvements in the job market, but it isn’t an advantage for everyone. According to Casselman, “employers have stepped up hiring, layoffs have slowed, and the unemployment rate has begun to fall more quickly” (Casselman 1). Opportunities for the unemployed, however, have been sparse. People who are unemployed have seen a slower job recovery, as 3.5% of the unemployed have been without jobs for more than six months. Casselman explains how economists divide unemployment into two categories. Cyclical unemployment basically comes from the economy’s overall weakness. Structural unemployment occurs when the skills of the worker doesn’t meet the needs of the employer. Overall, finding a job hasn’t been a struggle for just the unemployed; it has been a struggle for nearly everyone. When reading this article, I got the impression that it was geared more towards a white audience. What I didn’t like is that Casselman didn’t really go into the demographics of the unemployment population. He failed to share what percentage of the unemployed population is black, and what percentage of the unemployed population is white? I did my own research and found the following information:
• As of March 2012, 14% of black people are unemployed, opposed to the 7.3% of white people that are unemployed.
• Black males ages 16 and up have an unemployment rate of 14.8% while white males have an unemployment rate of 7.4%.
• Overall, black teens have an unemployment rate of 40.5% while white teens have an unemployment rate of 22.5%.
• Black male teens have an unemployment rate of 40.2 % while white male teens have an unemployment rate of 22.5%.
• Black adults have an unemployment rate of 13% while white adults have an unemployment rate of 6.75%.
• Black male adults have an unemployment rate of 13.8% while white male adults have an unemployment rate of 6.8%.
Based on this information, the unemployment rate for black people is relatively higher than that of white people. When Casselman explained that 3.5% of the population has been unemployed for more than six months, I tried to look at the issue from a black perspective. Why would black people be unemployed for such a long time? In his text, Maulana Karenga offers many different reasons for black unemployment. Among these reasons are low educational levels and lack of job skills, recurring recession, unwillingness to take menial jobs, displacement, etc… (Karenga 337).
Among the reasons for black unemployment, the main reason why black people are unemployed and often remain unemployed is because of their low educational levels and lack of job skills. The high unemployment rate among teens may be due to their low educational levels. A lot of teens are dropping out of high school and college, and they don’t have the degree that will get them a job with great pay. In his text, Karenga explains how the private sector will expand more rapidly than the public sector, which will “cost black jobs given their large share of public jobs” (Karenga 338). Because of this, black people are going to need a higher degree of skill as well as education. This is what Casselman calls structural unemployment, where the skills of the worker don’t meet the needs of the employer. We can’t get jobs if we aren’t prepared for it.
Something that I found a bit insulting when reading this article was when Casselman explained the worries long term unemployment gave on economists. Casselman explains that “the long term unemployed could effectively break off from the normal job market, ultimately forming an underclass of the more or less permanently unemployed” (Casselman 1). The underclass, according to Karenga’s text, is a “permanently entrapped population of poor persons, used and unwanted…unemployed, welfare dependent, and without sufficient income to secure a decent quality of life” (Karenga 347). It seems as if the white community is afraid of being poor. This offended me because there are many black families who are considered part of the underclass, but America does nothing to help them. Now when unemployment becomes an issue among everyone, white people are afraid of being poor. It seems as if they just care about themselves, and have no concern for the well being of people in the black communities that are poor and have to depend on things like welfare and SSI.
Unemployment is an issue that everyone suffers from, but I think the black community suffers the most. I wish Casselman would have looked at the unemployment issue from more than one perspective. He only considered how unemployment affects white people and not so much how it affects the Black and Latino community.