GOP attacks on public-sector jobs and unions will disproportionately affect blacks and women, according to a new analysis of employment data by a labor-policy specialist from the University of California, Berkeley.

“We found that blacks are much more likely to be employed by the public sector than are whites,” said Steven Pitts, an economist with the university’s Center for Labor Education and Research, where he focuses on employment issues involving the black community.

One in five African-American workers are employed in public sector jobs, Pitts said, versus one in six white workers and one in ten Latino workers. He said blacks are 30 percent more likely to hold such jobs than whites.

For black men, the public sector—everything from police officers and firefighters to sanitation workers and government clerks—is the largest employer, providing 18 percent of jobs. For black women, it’s the No. 2 employer, accounting for 23.3 percent of jobs.

By comparison, the public sector employs 14.2 percent of white male and 19.8 percent of white female workers.

Terrible Timing for Black Workers

The assault on public-sector employment could not come at a worse time for blacks, who have been much harder hit by job losses—and cuts in the social safety net—than the workforce as a whole.

The jobless rate for blacks was 15.7 percent in January, versus than 8 percent for whites and 9 percent for the population overall, according to the Monthly Black Worker Report published by Pitts and his UC Berkeley colleagues. Although the unemployment rate for whites has been edging down in recent months, for blacks, it remains stuck near historically high levels.

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