by Pharoh Martin
NNPA News Service

WASHINGTON – While the nation is reeling over double-digit jobless rates showing up for the first time in decades, African-American males are looking at numbers almost twice as worse.

Almost one in five African-American men 20 years old or older is without a job, according to figures released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics earlier this month.

The seasonally adjusted October unemployment rate for African-American males is above 17 percent, whereas the jobless rate for white adult males and females is under double digits at 9.5 percent and 7.4 percent, respectively. At 12.4 percent, joblessness for African-American women also skews above the national rate, which is currently at 10.2 percent, approaching the December 1982 level of 10.8 percent.

The disparate rates of African-American male unemployment have teetered near recession-type numbers above eight percent since 2001. Since April, however, the rates have surged to around 17 percent, numbers that are comparable to the Great Depression of the early 1930s, according to Dr. Rodney Green, Howard University economics department chairman and the executive director of the Howard University Center for Urban Progress.

“There has been a consistent pattern of black male unemployment rates that are twice the unemployment of whites, even in good or bad times,” Green said.

Green tiess the pattern to continuing discrimination against African-American males in the labor market, and also to a split in the labor market where job loss is greatest in industries such as construction, service and retail that employ large numbers of African-Americans.

Roderick Harrison, a fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, is an expert on labor markets. He says even if the nation starts to experience job growth, that scenario still won’t favor African Americans and Hispanics until later in the recovery.

People without college degrees have faced the brunt of job losses and African-American males have lower rates among groups that hold college degrees.

“Men in this recession, generally of all races, are getting hit harder than women particularly because of the loss of jobs in industries that have traditionally been male-dominated such as finance, construction, real estate, manufacturing,” Harrison said.

“Professionals and people with college degrees, with the exception of finance and real estate, have been better protected,” said Harrison. “They tend to have greater job stability.”

So what must be done to decrease African-American male unemployment in an economy that many experts predict will long continue to be a jobless recovery?

 Both Harrison and Green agree that education is key for African-American males and that more must be done to increase African-American men with college degrees.

“The major disadvantages that black males, and to a certain extent, females face can and only will be overcome by closing education gaps. That is clearly the biggest contributor to the differentials in unemployment rates,” Harrison said.

Green and Harrison said it’s important to organize politically against employment racism. They maintain that unless there is major change in the current structure there is not much that can be done on the ground level in the short term.

“It will take a sustained movement of workers against discrimination in the labor market,” Green said. “They will need to wage a sharper struggle against employers who think nothing about throwing people out of work while giving themselves bigger bonuses.”