UC Berkeley Study Seeks to Explain Disproportionately High Unemployment Numbers in Black Community Due to Loss of Public Sector Jobs

The high unemployment rate in the black community isn't due to racism as some black politicians would have you believe, it's partly tied to massive job losses in public sector due to budget cuts and other constraints.

COMMENTARY:  The Labor Center at the University of California, Berkeley, recently released a study that sought to explain the reasons for the high unemployment rates in the black community. According to the study, “the public sector is the most important source of employment for African Americans and a key source of high-paying jobs, especially for black women.” The report also states that African Americans are 30 percent more likely to hold government jobs than any other group; from 2008-2010, 21.2 percent of black workers were employed in the public sector, compared to just 16.3 percent of non-black workers. Be that as it may, the black community has also dropped the ball. We are going backward, not forward as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and other civil rights leaders had envisioned when they fought for racial justice and equality. Have you ever wondered how we could thrive in the Greenwood, neighborhood, also known as the "Black Wall Street," in Tulsa, Okla., in the early 20th century and can't seem to make headway now?

As you have most likely heard by now, the unemployment rates from black Americans rose to a shocking 16.7 percent in August, up from 15.9 percent in July. That's the highest it has been in 25 years, up from 16.5 percent in March and April 2010. The unemployment rate for black males rose to 18 percent, while black youth unemployment rose 46.5 percent in August, up from 39.2 percent in July.

It seems that black employment has been adversely affected by the continuing job losses in the public sector as a result of budget cuts and lay-offs, more than their white counterparts. This may explain, in part, why the black unemployment rate was twice the eight percent unemployment rate for whites.The public sector eliminated 17,000 jobs in August alone, bringing to the number to over 600,000 since 2008, according to Business Insider.

With the hemorrhaging in the public sector, many black workers aren't as educated as their white counterparts, therefore, the jobs they tend to hold are lower-level, clerical, service-type jobs. Not only do we need to jumpstart the private sector to hire more, there must also be retraining. The bottom line is no education + no skills = no jobs. "No Child Left Behind," has left many inner city black students behind. The playing field isn't as level as it needs to be for the rich and poor students in this country. Still, the black community doesn't need a handout from the government in the form of welfare. It's needs to reinvent itself through education and retraining, as well as correcting the social issues that have dogged us for so long. That starts with engaging your elected officials. Taking your rights as a citizen serious enough to go to the polls to vote in every election, local and national.

Change starts in the home. It involves a complete paradigm shift -- black fathers who are absent from their children's lives, need to step up to the plate and change that. Young black men walking around with sagging pants, need to purchase a belt. No-one is going to give you a job looking so unkempt and thuggish. The family structure was important to during the darkest period in America's history, but isn't the same today. We've lost our way, but it isn't too late to stem the tide. There is a lot of work to be done and we don't need to hear black or white politicians saying the plight of the black community is due to racism in this country, or that the Tea Party wants to "hang blacks from trees." That's not going to fix the problem.