American workers have obviously had a rough go of it the past few years. But an updated report by the Opportunity Agenda shows that Americans of color have seen unemployment increase at significantly higher rates than their white counterparts, and otherwise seen the gap between their level of “opportunity” and that of whites widen.
The Opportunity Agenda is a non-profit organization that analyzes data and research, pushes policies and trains leaders to increase social justice and equality around the idea of “opportunity.” The group defines opportunity as including mobility, equality, voice, redemption, community and security. In practical terms, these criteria include access to living wage jobs, education and health care; avoiding incarceration; having media literacy and access; and being able to rebuild when things go wrong. The group publishes annual and frequently updated online reports measuring these matrixes.
Even before the crisis, Latinos and African Americans had higher unemployment rates than whites. (Though the topping of the 10 percent bar for the national unemployment rate was seen as a dire milestone, African American unemployment had been significantly over 10 percent even before the economic crisis.)
While the overall unemployment rate increased 2.6%, from 7.4% in December 2008 to 10% in 2009, the increase in unemployment was significantly higher for African Americans and Latinos. African American unemployment increased 4.1%, from 12.1% to 16.2%, and Latino unemployment increased 3.5%, from 9.4% to 12.9%.
And blacks and Latinos who did not lose their jobs still saw their wages fall even farther below whites, to 75 percent and 72 percent of median white wages, respectively. Women’s median wages are still just at 78 percent of men’s median wages. And even African Americans with full-time jobs are now five percent more likely to be living in poverty than in 2007.
The report says that overall Americans actually became more likely to have health insurance, but interestingly Asian Americans became more likely to be uninsured. Meanwhile even with increased rates of insurance coverage, Americans became more likely to delay needed medical care, and their medical costs went up.
The number of immigrants incarcerated increased 11 percent from 2007 to the end of 2008. And black men became even more disproportionately likely to be incarcerated. However Latina and black women actually closed the incarceration rate gap with whites.
Even as the economy plummeted, college costs actually climbed significantly compared to a decade ago, with private universities costing on average $34,000 a year and public universities charging $14,000 a year. Even so, people found a way to afford it – the proportion of people with college degrees actually increased across the board. (Surely many of them were glad to hear Obama’s State of the Union promise about forgiving student loan debt after 20 years).
The Opportunity Agenda also aims to track how jobs and other benefits created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) affect people based on race and gender. Though a comprehensive analysis is hard to come by, the Opportunity Agenda says it is clear people of color and women are not benefiting as much from the stimulus as white men. (Previously employers and government officials have noted that white men – specifically those affiliated with larger construction firms – have benefited disproportionately simply because of the bill’s emphasis on “shovel-ready” projects.)
The report notes that the overall decline in opportunity actually had an ironically leveling effect on some previously existing disparities, including the poverty gap between women and men and between Native Americans and others. Women are still more likely than men to live in poverty (with poverty rates of 14.4 versus 12 percent), but as more men have become impoverished, the gap has closed.
Likewise for Native Americans, who saw their poverty gap shrink by 19 percent. In other words women and Native Americans have not become wealthier, but rather Americans in general have become poorer – bringing the average joe closer to those already on the bottom rung.
The report argues that not only does the government obviously have a mandate to create jobs and improve opportunity for all people, but addressing the opportunity gap in terms of race and gender – independent of the overall trends in the economy – will pay social and economic benefits.
The report’s recommendations include:
That federal, state, and local governments apply a dual lens of greater and more equal opportunity to their economic recovery efforts, including using an Opportunity Impact Statement4 requirement to prioritize, select, and evaluate current and planned public investment in transportation, urban development, green energy, and other priorities. Making equitable job creation, living wages, small business development, and economic security explicit criteria in existing publicly subsidized programs is a cost-neutral approach to promoting opportunity for all.
And:
Government, corporations, and civil society should prioritize initiatives that close opportunity gaps while expanding opportunity for all, including childcare tax credits and subsidies, community clinics in underserved neighborhoods, need-based student scholarships over loans, and anti-predatory lending enforcement.
Ultimately, the Opportunity Agenda concludes that jobs, education, mobility, stability and the like “are part of our human rights, the rights we all have simply by virtue of our humanity. As the founders of our nation recognized when they declared that we are all created equal, fulfilling our unalienable human rights is essential to realizing the American promise of opportunity for all.”
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Kari Lydersen is a Chicago-based journalist, author and assistant professor at Northwestern University, where she leads the investigative specialization at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. Her books include Mayor 1%: Rahm Emanuel and the Rise of Chicago’s 99%.
