My First Blog! Let's Talk About Jobs

Well Gang,

This is my first blog for 2011 and I decided to choose a topic that is near and dear to my heart, J.O.B.S! 

 

 As you know already, the United States unemployment rate was last reported at 9.80 percent in November of 2010. According to Trading Economics.com, the number of unemployed people was 15.1 million in November. The unemployment rate edged up to 9.8 percent; it was 9.6 percent in each of the prior 3 months.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men were 10.0 percent, adult women were 8.4 percent, whites were 8.9 percent, and Hispanics (13.2 percent) edged up in November. The jobless rate for blacks (16.0 percent) showed little change over the month, while the rate for teenagers declined to 24.6 percent. The jobless rate for Asians was 7.6 percent, not seasonally adjusted.

 

Work, or the lack of work, shapes the way we all live our lives. So it does not surprise me nor should it surprise you that the significant gains for some groups coupled with the stagnation of other groups is intimately connected to the kinds of jobs members of those groups have held. American minorities have made real gains in breaking into jobs that were mostly held by American whites. Furthermore, the chances of American minorities getting high-level jobs with good pay are considerably better than they have been in the past. But there is a underside to this progress.....

While the proportion of minority lawyers, bank managers, and engineers has risen, so has the proportion who are unemployed (IE according to the statics on Trading Economics.com). Joblessness has become a major crisis for American minorities. Minority unemployment rates are far higher than those of American whites.  Some researchers have attributed these trends mainly to the high rates of family breakup among minority groups. Although this may be a part of the explanation, it isn't all of it. Whatever the family structure may be, American minorities tend to have lower incomes and greater risks of poverty than American whites.

 

The decline and outsourcing of American industry jobs to other countries has also threaten the gains that American minorities have made. The lack of jobs is also compounded by low earnings for American minority workers who are employed. Some of the disparity between American minority and white earnings can be explained by educational differences and geographical concentrations. But these factors leave much of the earnings difference unexplained.

As Americans, we all have the power to find new ways to bridge the occupational status and the economic gap between American minorities and whites. The question is will we use it?