7 ms·
The Unemployment Rate for People Like You
- patio11 17y agoI've said it before and I'll say it again: I can't stand them editorially speaking but the NYT is hands-down the best paper in the world at taking advantage of modern web technology. This shows, in almost painful detail, the bifurcation of the economy I was talking about earlier. Those of us who are college educated with a few years of experience could be excused for not knowing we are in a recession (4.3%). New graduates have it tougher (8.X%). Folks without high school diplomas are in total crisis. (The highest unemployment rate, to the surprise of essentially no one: black men 15-24 with no degree. Its 8.5%... sorry, missed a digit, 48.5%.)
- kalendae 17y agoIf you are a black man between 15-24 with no high school diploma, changing the color of your skin (to white) has more positive impact than getting that high school diploma.
- heyadayo 17y agoWhat's even more interesting is that changing your race to Hispanic has an almost identically positive impact as changing to white. Are we actually that much more discriminatory (as a society) against blacks as compared to hispanics? Is this purely racism, or is something else at work? Perhaps it has to do with the ratio of passport/green card holders between the two ethnicities, and the economic advantages of hiring non-citizens in low-end jobs? The results are clear though: White men 15-24, no highschool: Unemployment 25.6% Black men 15-24, no highschool: Unemployment 48.5% Hispanic men 15-24, no highschool: Unemployment 25.8%
- MaysonL 17y agoFor women: White 15-24, no HS: 20.1%, Black: 36.8%, Hispanic: 29.9%
- dantheman 17y agoI wouldn't jump to racism right away, the system doesn't break down the numbers by locations. For instance rural people with no degrees may have an easier time finding jobs, whereas those in a city may not. I don't know the breakdown of rural hispanic, white, black, to the city but that might be able to explain it.
- hristov 17y agoI think you are right that the difference is immigration. A lot of hispanics at that age range and with no high school education are migratory farm workers that come to the US with jobs. Bad jobs but nevertheless jobs. And of course nobody will hire black people for those jobs. Those jobs are so hard and badly paid that they can only be performed by impoverished scared immigrants. And as far as racism goes I think there is a difference between the way hispanic and black men are treated. Racists usually fear young black men and consider them all violent criminals, so they would not give them jobs. As far as hispanics, the usual racist stereotype of the hispanic male is somebody that is good for a low wage menial job. So racism does not really prevent hispanics from getting jobs, just good jobs.
- 979s 17y agoI would wonder if there is a fear of hiring black men for extremely poor paying manual labour jobs for fear of the perception of slavery & racisim too.
- dschobel 17y agoI think fear of litigation is probably a significant factor. I have a friend who practices labor and employment law and he's kept on retainer at a few big companies to field calls such as "can we fire this person and not get sued?". They literally have a point system. Race, sex, sexual preference and disabilities (basically any protected class) are all assigned a certain number of points. Regardless if you're trying to fire someone for cause, if they are in some dangerous combination of protected classes (watch out for disabled black lesbians) and you want to minimize legal exposure, they'll advise you to keep them and put them in a position where they can do no harm to company. He has one firm who has an employee who has sued them five (!) separate times for racial discrimination (according to my friend, anytime the person gets a bad review or reprimanded). They can't get rid of the person for fear it'll look like retaliation. The whole situation is completely degenerate.
- yummyfajitas 17y agoSounds like a good reason for even a non-racist to avoid hiring minorities and other protected classes.
- natmaster 17y agoAm I the only one who thinks breaking this down by race is misleading? Why don't they have it broken down into industry? Saying this is due to racism is a huge leap from the correlation here. A more apt comparison would be people with the exact same skills and background applying for very similar jobs. Well, I guess that would be too hard. Let's stick to dividing everyone into little groups to make this easier for our brains.
- DougBTX 17y agoAm I the only one who thinks breaking this down by race is misleading? No more misleading than breaking it down by age. A more apt comparison would be people with the exact same skills and background applying for very similar jobs. That just hides all the people who would never get the skills or background to apply for those jobs because of their race. These statistics are profiling a society, not judging whether a particular interviewer has bias.
- gaius 17y agoAge in this case is just a proxy for year of graduation.
- bigsassy 17y agoI know what you mean. A black colleague of mine was recently let go from my company and he found new employment pretty quickly. I wonder, if you graphed unemployment for developers would there be such a large difference between blacks and the other races?
- wheels 17y agoI assume that the dominant factors are socio-economic rather than racial. The poverty rate for black americans is three times that what it is for white americans. I suspect if the unemployment rates were broken down by most recent household income that the correlation between race and unemployment would be much weaker than the correlation between previous economic status and unemployment. In other words, I expect that the unemployment rate for the black middle class isn't a whole lot higher than for the white middle class. How to grow larger minority middle-classes is a much deeper societal problem and is much less subject to relatively instantaneous fluctuations like unemployment rates.
- encoderer 17y agoThat's exactly correct. I had a nice chat about this with my gf recently... her mom is the traditional "southern woman" aka "socially acceptable racist." (her words, not mine. 'I'm just a 'southern girl' i can't help it) So I shared an insight with her that I'm not certain of but that makes sense to me: Since Nixon, income growth in inflation-adjusted dollars for the average American has actually fallen. From something like $46k median income in 1970 compared to $44k today. Anybody who grew up in the less affluent suburbs knows this just in their families and neighbors. The real prosperty that actually created the middle class in this country--the real upward mobility--that happened between 1945 and 1965. And it just so happens that while that was happening, most white Americans still treated blacks like 2nd class humans (at worst) and 2nd class citizens (at best). They missed out on the last big push of economic mobility. Lets hope that we all get a 2nd one in our lifetimes.
- silentbicycle 17y agoWhile this is a very large and complex issue, one of the major forces in that "big push" was veterans taking advantage of the GI Bill. Black veterans had a much harder time using its benefits, though - most universities were still segregated, for example.
- bilbo0s 17y agoI saw that. I thought that was crazy too! There is actually a demographic in the US for whom there is little incentive for education with respect to financial success. I would never have believed this without being presented with the data. It is so antithetical to my beliefs in my country that a large part of me wants to question the EDIT(sp):veracity of the NYT data. Even though I know that data is probably accurate. Just . . . Wow!
- jacobolus 17y agoIt would be interesting to see what the salaries and job types are for all of these groups: education might help significantly there (or might not; I have no idea). (also, I think you mean veracity)
- bilbo0s 17y agoOoops! You're right. Sorry I'm just so bothered by that data. Also, your other point is interesting as well. If a young black guy can get an education, let's say a high school diploma. He will have less of a chance of getting a job than a white man who does not have a high school diploma, we know that from this data. BUT, will the black guy with the high school diploma make more money than the white guy without a high school diploma IF he can find someone willing to give him a job? That's a great question. Prior to being presented with this data I would have been eager to get the answer. Now, I almost don't want to know, that answer could be even MORE depressing.
- DougBTX 17y agoGoogle Book result, you'll be after page 31, table 2.7. Doesn't include figures for high school dropouts though. "Racial and ethnic diversity in America: a reference handbook" - 2000 http://books.google.com/books?id=xc-YEVDhC0MC&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=income+level+high+school+race&source=bl&ots=NUpjNguZg6&sig=bSfeUmv4kEdByq5kxDsfrjwH0D8&hl=en&ei=Irr1SsqTIMHp4Qas57nXAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CA8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=income%20level%20high%20school%20race&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=xc-YEVDhC0MC&pg=PA30... The scary table is number 2.9: homicide by firearm, per year, per 100,000 people age 10-14 15-19 20-24 white 0.5 3.9 5.6 hispanic 1.1 14.0 18.1 black 1.8 29.1 55.6(!!)
- axod 17y agoQuite a lot of this seems US specific. I don't think for instance the UK has anywhere near the same level of racism.
- dschobel 17y ago'Shocking' racism in jobs market [1] The figures show black, Asian and other ethnic minorities are twice as likely to be unemployed, half as likely to own their home and run double the risk of poor health, compared with white Britons. [2] (from 2001 census, sorry, most recent I could find) [1]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3885213.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3885213.stm [2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britain-today-a-nation-still-failing-its-ethnic-minorities-538204.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britain-today...
- natmaster 17y agoCorrelation does not imply causation. http://xkcd.com/552/ http://xkcd.com/552/
- henrikschroder 17y agoCorrelation is not causation... I would guess that the important factor is instead your real-life social network. Most of those young, white, uneducated men are found in rural areas where there is a strong sense of community and people help out and get jobs for each other. Whereas the young, black, uneducated men are more likely to live in urban areas where they have a weak social network that can't help them get jobs, so the best thing they can do is to become friends with people who have jobs, and if you flunked out of high-school, that's very, very difficult.
- catzaa 17y agoWhat I have seen is that there are a lot of white people doing well without college education. But this doesn't mean that they do not receive any education. A lot of white people (in my part of the world) learn their parent's occupation. A good example is farming - a farmer will learn his sons how to farm. Or estate agents. So they have an aweful lot of skills transferred to them (just through a university that doesn't grant degrees ;) )
- elblanco 17y agoOr professional certification programs.
- btakita 17y agoHaving a criminal past is also a huge factor. This is anecdotal, but my neighbor's son is a black 35 year old male lacking a high school education and had a BS drug charge. It is very difficult for him to find a job, after all, who wants to hire an ex-con? Also, his social network makes him very likely to be harassed by police. I think the decriminalization of drugs will help the inequality, or at least fix a symptom.
- btakita 17y agoUpdate, just found out my neighbor's son got a job working at the Port of Oakland for $8.50/hour. He also has a high school education (not that it has a big bearing on the employment rate of his peers).
- Deestan 17y agoA sex change would apparently do wonders too; from 49% down to 37%. Anyone have any speculations to why? Might it simply be that a lot of women for some reason don't register themselves as unemployed?
- dustingetz 17y agoeconomics is pretty complicated, and correlation does not imply causation.
- MikeCapone 17y agoI'm surprised that the WSJ hasn't caught on and started doing more cool things with all its data.
- skinnymuch 17y agoThey're too busy not reporting on Glenn Beck's supposed involvement with a female in 1990.
- bigsassy 17y agoIn my experience, it's not so much about being black as the environment you grow up in. There was an interesting study done by a professor of anthropology from University of California at Berkeley. Shaker heights was full of affluent African Americans, and yet there was still a large acheivment gap between the black students and white students. The study concluded that the parents didn't involve themselves in their children's education as they figured living in an upper middle class society did the work for them. Meanwhile the kids held themselves back so they wouldn't be "acting white". You can read about the study here, it's quite facinating: http://www.racematters.org/whyareblackstudentslagging.htm http://www.racematters.org/whyareblackstudentslagging.htm For what it's worth, I'm black and grew up an upper-middle-class household in a mostly white middle-class area. At 27 I've had no trouble finding a good job and in fact just recently turned down a high-paying job offer at a fortune 500 last month. Race has never been an issue for me, one way or the other.
- TheElder 17y agoI like you. I wish more blacks had your attitude. Actually, I wish I could hug you.
- duh 17y agoYou "wish" more blacks could be more like him? How many black people do you have intimate conversations with to base your opinion on how "most" of them are like? I'm curious - what's your opinion on what other races who aren't white should be more like? I mean in your perfect world where white people just dictated how everyone should behave.
- stilist 17y agoYour condescencion is appreciated, I’m sure.
- elblanco 17y agoThe curve for young black educated men was actually the most shocking for me. It doesn't follow the smooth, more predictable trending that most other groups show.
- vaksel 17y agoyou also need to take things like underemployement into the equation, the main reason there aren't any jobs for people without a college degree, is because people with college degree are taking jobs at 7-8 bucks an hour just to put food on the table
- rdtsc 17y agoThat is probably tied into immigration and welfare policies. An illegal worker from Mexico will pick potatoes for $4/hour, while a poor black person who is a US citizen will probably refuse the same job even at $8/hour (or whatever the minimum wage is these days). A black person will probably rely on welfare. An illegal worker does not have access to the same level of welfare.
- vanekl 17y agoWow, the term Politically Correct means nothing to you. Lawrence Summers got pilloried for less. I'm not sure you can use the term "illegal" workers any more in polite company. I think the New York Times prefers the word "undocumented." And I'm not going to touch the rest of that paragraph. (Mock outrage and major hand-wringing, and a slight whiff of pretentiousness that goes along when I cluck my tongue in a condescending manner.)
- vaksel 17y agocost of living does not allow you to live on $8 an hour. $8/hour means you need 2-3 jobs just to feed your kids. If you don't have 2-3 jobs, you have to make ends meet with $16K a year. Remove the $12K that you'll pay for rent in pretty much any of the major cities. And you have $333 to live on. That won't even cover your basics like gas/electricity and water.
- ahlatimer 17y agoI live a fairly adequate lifestyle making around $16k a year (I'm a college student and only work ~25/hrs per week). That covers rent, gas, food, utilities, and entertainment. Granted, I don't have kids to support and I have a roommate, but it is in fact possible to live on a very modest income.
- mojaam 17y agoAlthough this is depressing, it's also a good learning tool.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- _ck_ 17y agoUnless I am missing something, they contradicted themselves. The graph shows that the recession IS affecting everyone in all the groups equally. They are all a few percentage higher than last September, but the ratio is the same as last September. Instead of doing this by age, gender, race and education they should have shown this by TYPE of job. Then it would be very uneven. They should do this kind of graph for health care coverage.
- rdtsc 17y agoThey should have also broken it down by the income level. > They should do this kind of graph for health care coverage. Some topics are not appropriate for public discourse as far as large media corporations are concerned. We are not supposed to discuss the number of bankruptcies / year due to health care costs, or how health insurance is linked to employment and since there is a high un-employment, there is probably a large number of un-insured individuals as well. And how on the first accident any one of those uninsured will probably blow through their life savings, credit card accounts and eventually declare bankruptcy.
- ahlatimer 17y ago> They should have also broken it down by the income level. Don't most unemployed people have an income of 0, or whatever their unemployment checks are?
- ericlavigne 17y agoYes, but I would propose breaking it down by their level of median annual income over the last 5-10 years. This would give a number, for any given individual, would tend to change gradually over a lifetime and would not be significantly affected by a year or two of unemployment. This would show how much of the unemployment was affecting only those who were already losing in the employment game.
- araneae 17y agoWhite female college graduates between 25 and 44 have the lowest unemployment rate of any demographic group.
- jlees 17y agoAs one of the above, I found this statistic oddly pleasing, since only one of the above factors was within my control.
- netcan 17y agoI think that women are more likely to leave the workforce when it is difficult to get a job & enter it when it is particularly attractive. Extended maternity breaks, home makers etc. Leaving the workforce is leaving the graph, neither employed or unemployed.
- alphamerik 17y agoMaybe, or perhaps or is because they are white and college educated. After all, white male college graduates between 25 and 44 have the next lowest unemployment rate of any demographic group.
- netcan 17y agoCertainly that is the greater effect. My comment is to describe the remaining discrepancy: Women consistently have a lower unemployment rate across demographics.
- pbhjpbhj 17y agoDo they count those on maternity leave or who work fulltime homemaking as being either not unemployed or employed at home? Sacking women at the lower end of this age range could lead to sexual discrimination suits - "she heard I was trying for a baby then I was sacked, ..." to avoid maternity payments?
- etherael 17y agoI question the definition of "people like me". If i could pick a few attributes about which I felt least influenced my character, race, age, education level would definitely be right up at the top.
- gaius 17y agoYou are not a precious and unique snowflake, and neither am I.
- etherael 17y agoBe that as it may, do you seriously think if you were the exact same person, simply hadn't finished high school and/or were a different race, you'd be a different person? I just don't see how race affects anything at all, maybe this is more a specifically American thing? Official education likewise seemed a giant waste of time to me.
- gaius 17y agoIn education, yes, of course I would. I'm not an incredibly motivated, dynamic person who could make stuff happen whatever the circumstance, those people are incredibly rare, that's why they're famous, like Richard Branson. I worked hard at school, went to a top college, went to work in high tech, fairly typical "geek" life. Would I be the same person now if I'd been stuck in the small town I grew up in, working a dead-end job, surrounded by people who were going nowhere? I don't think my race has disadvantaged me professionally, but it certainly had an effect in that small town when there was at most one non-white kid in every class... My education got me out of that world and I've never looked back.
- roundsquare 17y agoYes, I think my life would have been very different. I probably wouldn't have gotten my first job since I got it through campus recruiting. The people I met there have again influenced me and has led me to where I am today and a lot of the views I have. Of course, in some ways, I would be the same person, but to claim that I would be essentially the same had I not finished high school is, in my mind, pretty absurd. With respect to race... it is something that happens in the US. I can't speak for other countries though.
- motters 17y agoFrom my own observations, unemployment amongst software engineers seems to be high.
- tybris 17y agoLooks like in 1 year time (when I'm 25) I'll double my chances of getting a job.
- elblanco 17y agoTufte would be proud of this.
- alain94040 17y agoAnother interesting factoid: if you select people 25-44 with college degree, you can improve your score by selecting women instead of men. Who would have thought? Educated women are doing better than educated men? I like it.
- lallysingh 17y agoTime to start hunting for a sugar mama :-)
- EinhornIsFinkle 17y agoThats a pretty cool interface to present all that data.