Though pundits were quick to declare that the election of Barack Obama represented the emergence of a "post- racial" America, the macroeconomy has provided a corrective. During the American economy"s last deep recession, in the early 1980s, black unemployment soared to twice the level among whites, passing 21% in 1983. And according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics, time has changed little. The current unemployment rate among black Americans is almost 16%; among whites the figure is under 10%.
The yawning gap between blacks and whites persists across demographic lines. The current "mancession" has hit male-dominated professions hardest. But white men face a relatively mild unemployment rate of just over 10% compared with over 18% among black men. For the worst-off, the data are catastrophic. Among young black men without a high-school diploma, nearly half have no jobs. These rates are based on a labour-force number which excludes those in prison; if there were not five times as many blacks behind bars as whites, the figures would look even worse.
There is no shortage of explanations for the gap. States with weaker labour markets, like South Carolina and Michigan, also tend to have larger black populations than low-unemployment states like Iowa and Montana. Predominantly black neighbourhoods are often a long way from where jobs are concentrated, in largely white suburbs, so those without cars cannot get to them.
Blacks are also at a disadvantage when it comes to relying on friends and family connections to find jobs; there is not the same network of family businesses that whites and Latinos have. Some studies have found that this factor may explain as much as 70% of the difference in black and white unemployment rates, and may also explain the difference between black and Latino jobless rates. Among young men, for instance, the near-20% Hispanic unemployment rate is much closer to that for whites (17%) than blacks (30%). And discrimination, too, plays a part.
What is clear is that the unemployment problem in black communities will not end with the recession. The employment-to-population ratio among black adults is only just above 50%, and it is closer to a shocking 40% for young black men; for adult whites it is 59%. Black workers are also unemployed for about five weeks longer, on average, than the rest of the population. Some 45% of unemployed blacks have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer, compared with just 36% of unemployed whites. That means continued loss of skills, and a longer and harder road back into the workforce.In the passage, the author mainly discusses about ______.
