Lexington Herald-Leader
- There’s little to celebrate this Labor Day. The unemployment rate for July, stuck at 9.5 percent, means that 14.6 million people who have been looking for work are still jobless.
The situation is even worse for blacks between the ages of 16 and 24. Only one in three of them has a job. An additional one-third are actively job hunting without any luck. In contrast, more than half of their white counterparts have jobs and “only” 16 percent are unemployed, a rate one-half that of blacks.
The higher unemployment among blacks – often exacerbated by the tumult of a recession – is partly explained by differences in educational attainment. The bigger problem? Even if you take two individuals who are exactly the same in every way except race and present them to employers for a job opening, chances are the African-American will be less likely to get an offer.
