Bidenomics and blue-state policies hurt black workersBy NY Post Editorial Board
February 19, 2022
More terrible news for New York City: Black unemployment remains stubbornly high at 15.2%, per the latest data. Worse, one in five black New Yorkers is either out of work, involuntarily part-time or has given up the job search entirely.
The trend is bad, too. Unemployment inched downward over the latter half of 2021 for whites, Asians and Hispanics in the city, but kept ticking up for blacks.
And the bad news is national. February’s jobs report showed that US black unemployment, at 6.9%, is significantly higher than the overall 4% rate. Some areas are as bad as New York: In late 2021, black unemployment in Washington, DC stood at 15.4% vs. 8.1% overall. In Illinois, it was 13.3% vs. 7.4%. In California, 12% vs 7.2%.
Part of the issue: Blacks tend to be overrepresented in “frontline” industries (i.e., where work has to be in-person), and their wages tend to be lower. So blue-state policies that punish retail businesses and keep kids at home are going to do blacks disproportionate harm. NYC, for example, faces a 400,000-plus job deficit post-pandemic, with some 82% of those in face-to-face industries.
Another cause: Bidenomics, the big-spending, inflation-driving disaster of an economic policy that the White House has been all-in on since the inauguration.
Need proof? Look at the pre-COVID economic boom: Black workers benefited more in the Trump years than under any recent Democratic or GOP president. The nationwide black unemployment rate fell below 6% for the first time since 1972. Black poverty fell below 20% for the first time since World War II. From 2017 to 2019, median household income for black families grew 15.4%, vs. 11.5% for white families.* * *
Source:
https://nypost.com/2022/02/19/bidenomics-and-blue-state-policies-hurt-black-workers/
