‘Age of Inequality’ has ushered in low-wage work for Black employees

By Frederick H. Lowe
Contributing Writer

(Special from NorthStar News Today) — A substantial percentage of Black men and Black women work full-time jobs but earn part-time salaries, keeping their families improvised, according to a new report about Black workers.

The study, titled “Low-Wage Work in the Black Community in the Age of Inequality,” reported that 35.5% of Black men and 40.2% of Black women earned an annual median income of $15,600 between 2010 and 2012. This compares to 21.4% of white men who were low-wage workers and 30.9% of white women.

“We are not living in a post-racial world governed by color blind institutions and social norms,” Steven Pitts, associate director of the University of California at Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, wrote in the article published in May in #BlackWorkersMatter. “Rather, we are living in an Age of Inequality, and this new era presents new mechanisms through which hierarchies are maintained.”

Pitts said today’s labor market is much different now than it was after World War II when the strategies to improve economic outcomes for Black workers were shaped.

He noted that many new jobs pay low wages and don’t provide health insurance or retirement benefits. “Consequently, we need to re-examine the traditional approaches to solving the Black jobs crisis,” Pitts said.

Printed above the article’s headline, Pitts quotes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., saying, “The only problem is not only unemployment, it is under- or sub-employment…people who work full-time jobs for part-time wages.” Dr. King made those comments on March 10, 1968, just weeks before his assassination on April 4, 1968.

Pitts reported that 76.3% of African Americans between 20-24 were low-wage workers compared to 69.0% of whites. Some 42.1% of Blacks between the ages of 25 to 35 were low-wage workers compared to 27.7% of whites in the same age group. Among workers 35 years old and older, 29.2% of Blacks were low-wage workers compared to 18.6% of whites.

Most Black low-wage workers live in South (58.6%), and the lowest number or 7.5% live in the West, according to the report. Some 17.2% of Black low-wage workers live in the Midwest and 16.7% live in the Northeast.

The three industries with the largest%age of low-wage Black-male workers are restaurants (71.97%), grocery stores (55.90%) and accommodations (54.33%). The three industries employing the largest%age of low-wage Black women workers are restaurants, accommodations and grocery stores.

The metro areas with the largest%age of Black low-wage workers are Boston (45.8%), Philadelphia (39.7%), New York (37.5%), Chicago (37%), Atlanta (36.9%), Miami (35.4%), Washington, D.C. (35.2%), Houston (34.1%), Dallas (33%) and Los Angeles (28.5%).

Pitts’ chapter on low-wage work is one of five that identifies and explores challenges facing Black workers. The study is funded by The Discount Foundation, a private foundation based in Brooklyn, N.Y., concerned with issues facing Black workers, and the Neighborhood Funders Group, which is based in Oakland, California.

The report takes its name from #BlackLives Matter, which came into being following the murder of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager who was shot to death by George Zimmerman on February 26, 2012. An all-women’s jury acquitted Zim­merman of the charges associated with the incident.

This article originally published in the June 8, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.