New York Times July 19, 2004
By BOB HERBERT
Drive through some of the black neighborhoods in cities
and towns across America and you will see the evidence of an
emerging catastrophe - levels of male joblessness that mock
the very idea of stable, viable communities.
This slow death of the hopes, pride and well-being of
huge numbers of African-Americans is going unnoticed by most
other Americans and by political leaders of both parties.
A new study of black male employment trends has come up
with the following extremely depressing finding: "By
2002, one of every four black men in
the U.S. was idle all year long. This
idleness rate was twice as high as that of white
and Hispanic males."
It's possible the rate of idleness is even higher, said
the lead author of the study, Andrew Sum, who is director of
the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern
University in Boston.
"That was a conservative count," he said. The study did
not consider homeless men or those in jail or prison. It is
believed that up to 10 percent of the black male population
under age 40 is incarcerated.
While some of the men not working undoubtedly were ill or
disabled, the 25 percent figure is still staggeringly high.
And for some segments of the black male population, the
situation is even worse.
Among black male dropouts, for example, 44 percent were
idle year-round, as were nearly 42 of every 100 black
men aged 55 to 64.
"I was surprised by the magnitude of the population that
was idle all year-round," said Professor Sum.
"Typically, some groups will find
work part of the year, but not the
other part, and you end up with a high joblessness rate.
But here we've got a growing number of men just not
working at all."
Black men, already in an employment crisis, were hit
particularly hard by the last recession and have not done
well in the fitful recovery that followed. Jobless rates for
some subgroups, black teenagers for example, have been all
but off the charts.
Professor Sum and his colleagues got closer than official
statistics usually get to the dismal employment reality of
black men by using the so-called employment-population
ratio, which represents the percentage of a given population
that is employed at a given time. The government's official
unemployment statistics are often misleading, particularly
because people who have stopped looking for work are not
counted.
Things fall apart when 25 percent of the male population
is jobless. (This does not even begin to address the very
serious problems of underemployment, such as part-time or
temporary jobs, and extremely low-wage work.) Men in a
permanent state of joblessness are in no position to take on
the roles of husband and father. Marriage? Forget about it.
Child support? Ditto.
For the most part, jobless men are not viewed as
marriageable material by women. And they are hardly
role models for young people.
Those who remain jobless for a substantial period of time
run the risk of becoming permanently unemployable.
This is a tragic situation for the men and their families
and a serious problem for society at large. Such a
huge all-but-permanently-unemployed population is an
obstacle to efforts to achieve full employment and its
accompanying benefits. These men are not contributing to tax
revenues and they are consuming public and social services.
And some, inevitably, are engaged in criminal and other
anti-social behavior.
Figuring out ways to get this population gainfully
employed would turn a net societal deficit into a real
benefit.
Finally, it's just wrong to allow so many Americans to
remain in a state of social and economic degradation
without attempting to alter the conditions
responsible for their suffering.
Education is one of the keys here. As Professor Sum
found, 44 percent of black men with
no high school diploma were idle
year-round versus 26 percent of those with a diploma,
and 13 percent of those with a bachelor's (or higher)
degree.
The distance from the idleness of the street corner to
the warmth of a thriving family is not really that far,
especially when a helping hand is offered. But we'll never
offer the helping hand if we fail to recognize that there's
a problem.
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