Obama Administration has failed Blacks and Non-Hispanic Whites On Job Growth

Obama Administration has failed Blacks and Non-Hispanic Whites On Job Growth

Blacks constitute 13% of the US population of 313 million, or about 40 million men, women, and children, as of December 2011. Hispanics are 16% of thepopulation, or about 50 million. The percentage of blacks who voted for Obama in 2008 was about 96%, and Hispanics went for Obama percentage wise in the high 60's. So a reasonable question might be, "Well, Bubba, just how did Blacks and Hispanics fare in the last 3 1/2 years under an Obama Presidency?

This is not a rhetorical question, and we have to thank Ms. Julia Ro of NPR, and Roderick Harrison, of Howard University for doing theresearch to provide the answers to the above very relevant and interesting question. Are Blacks and Hispanics better off today than they were 3 1/2 years ago? Well, were they?

Hold on now, let's answer the question cautiously. To begin with, Blacks are 30 percent more likely than nonblacks to work in the public sector, according to the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education. MOreover roughly 21 percent of black workers are public employees, compared with 16.3 percent of nonblacks. Starting to sound good, right?

But government jobs, long considered the most secure form of employment in America, have rapidly disappeared since the start of the last recession in December 2007 — particularly at the state and local levels, where officials have cut budgets to cope with declining tax revenues and the rising costs of unemployment benefits, employee pensions and Medicare.

After the civil rights gains of the 1960s, blacks moved steadily into local, state and federal government jobs, particularly in civil servant and teaching positions. Since the collapse of U.S. manufacturing sector, started in the '80's, it is the public sector which has been the biggest employer for African-Americans.And not only have Blacks moved in disproportionally greater numbers than nonblacks into the  public jobs themselves, but also the their relativelycompetitive pay scales have lifted generations of blacks into the middle class. Berkeley’s labor center found that among industries that pay blacks the highest wages, the biggest proportion of those blacks work in the public sector.

It turns out, however, that those great public sector jobs were not so sustainable in bad economic times, where there are both rising budget deficits and a lack of productivity in a more competitive, more technological economy. Examples are the declines in workers for the U.S. Postal Service, when confronted with the competitive forces of the privat sector, email, FedEx and UPS.

But talk is cheap, lets look at the above chart, showing the growth in public sector jobs for Blacks, Hispanics, and Non-Hispanic Whites, for the period December 2007 to the present. The answer is:

1) Hispanics have done best,going from job growth of -4.2% in December 2007, to the current +10.5%, an increase of +15% !!

2) Blacks have done worse than Hispanics, going from job growth of -4.2% in December 2007, to the current -5.5%, a decrease of about 1.3%.

3) Non-Hispanic Whites have done worst of all, going from job growth of +4.2% in December 2007, to the current -3.0%, an decrease of 7.3%.

Based on these figures it would seem reasonable to expect a decline in Obama's support among Blacks and Non-Hispanic Whites, and an increase in the support of Obama by Hispanics. Recent polling data contradicts this however, and re-affirms the 2008 trends as being operative in the 2012 election. Obama sure hopes that is the case.