If the white middle class is hurting during a recession, it's almost a given the people of color are hit harder. And the numbers -- and the gap -- are staggering.
Adds Algernon Austin, director of the Economic Policy Institute's Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy: "The recession is not over for black folks."In 2004, the median net worth of white households was $134,280, compared with $13,450 for black households, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Economic Policy Institute. By 2009, the median net worth for white households had fallen 24 percent to $97,860; the median net worth for black households had fallen 83 percent to $2,170, according to the institute.Austin described the wealth gap this way: "In 2009, for every dollar of wealth the average white household had, black households only had two cents."
At this point it isn't a matter of "we need to fix this." The black middle class, a demographic that had grown over the decades, is being crushed by job loss and disproportional foreclosure rates. Austin remarked that once-stable jobs in areas of state and local government (these sectors have an over-representation of minorities, percentage-wise) have been targeted to deal with massive budget crises. And these numbers cut across class:
And that foreclosure rate of 8% for blacks (compared to 4.5% for whites), to a high level of competition for the few "good jobs" that are opening up, and it's likely this level of disproportionate economic crisis will hang on for some years to come.Since the end of the recession, which lasted from 2007 to 2009, the overall unemployment rate has fallen from 9.4 to 9.1 percent, while the black unemployment rate has risen from 14.7 to 16.2 percent, according to the Department of Labor. Last April, black male unemployment hit the highest rate since the government began keeping track in 1972. Only 56.9 percent of black men over 20 were working, compared with 68.1 percent of white men.Even college-educated blacks fared worse than their white counterparts in the recession. In 2007, unemployment for college-educated whites was 1.8 percent; for college-educated blacks it was 2.7 percent. Now, the college-educated unemployment rate is 3.9 percent for whites and 7 percent for blacks.
We are all going to be paying for Bush's reign of economic terror for a long time. No matter who occupies the White House or which party is in charge on the Hill, this mess will be laid at the doorstep of every politician down to the state level. There's no easy fix, and if you're the person without a job, regardless of color, you're desperate for an answer. And if these folks flip the TV on, all they see is bickering.