Annual Report: Black Employment and Unemployment in 2011
January 2012, by Steven Pitts

A year-in-review of the Monthly Black Worker Report, “Annual Report: Black Employment and Unemployment in 2011” finds that last year’s unemployment rates for Black workers remained in the 15 to 16 percent range, while unemployment for the rest of the workforce dropped below 9 percent. The report is based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey, and breaks out unemployment rates by race, gender and age groups in 2011.

Black Workers and the Public Sector
April 2011, by Steven Pitts

The standoff in Wisconsin highlights the fiscal crisis facing state and local governments across the country. Required by law to balance their budgets, politicians in state legislatures, school boards, and city councils are faced with the choices of cutting public services and laying off workers, raising revenue, or some combination of the two. They are deciding these choices in an economic context where the Great Recession caused the deficits and any deficit-reduction option exerts a drag on the recovery. Since January 2009, state and local governments have laid off 429,000 workers. As governments contemplate additional layoffs, it is important to note that few commentators have examined the racial implications of this reduction in government employment.

The End of the Recession? How Blacks Might Fare in the Jobless Recovery
October 2010, by Sylvia Allegretto and Steven Pitts

Recently, there have been seemingly contradictory announcements concerning the economy. In September another 95,000 jobs were shed as the unemployment rate remained at 9.6%. Unemployment has been at least 9.5% for well over a year now. About the same time it was announced that the recession, which began in December 2007, had actually ended in June of last year—thus we are several months into the second year of recovery. This brief provides some explanation and context in light of economy recovery amidst continued job losses and stubbornly high unemployment.

The State of Black Workers before the Great Recession
July 2010, by Sylvia Allegretto and Steven Pitts

Congress has debated various policy measures aimed to restore the economy to its pre-recession track. However, simply ending the recession will not solve the job crisis within the Black community. Many analysts have noted that labor market distress—when properly calculated—among Black workers has been at catastrophic levels for decades. In the tough labor market of today, about one out of every four Black workers is underemployed, but even in good times the ratio was one in seven. Labor markets prior to December 2007 did not serve the Black community well; to the contrary, racial inequality in labor market outcomes was a central feature. This research brief documents aspects of racial inequality before the Great Recession.

Beyond the Mountaintop: King’s Prescription for Poverty, by Steven Pitts of UC Berkeley and William Spriggs of Howard University, is a policy brief that analyzes African Americans’ economic progress over the last 40 years and uses Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, vision of economic justice as the basis for policy recommendations to dramatically reduce poverty.

This study that finds that more than half of U.S. Black workers earn low wages and lack advancement options. The study also explores how new global economic realities are having an impact on future employment prospects for Black workers.

This report documents the disproportionate number of Blacks holding low-wage, dead-end jobs, and assesses responses to this crisis from activist organizations nationwide. The author reviews the wide range of activities of Black-oriented non-profits, generally, and the geared towards work and employment issues, specifically. The author notes the lack of programs directly targeting the transformation of bad jobs, and discusses reasons for this state of affairs. The report weighs the effectiveness of race-based organizing, and discusses collective action strategies to combat the problem of bad jobs.