A report released earlier this summer from the Economic Policy Institute shows a similar picture of economic inequality. Consider that black Americans are still twice as likely as white Americans to be unemployed — exactly the same situation as 50 years ago.
The Week
August 29, 2013
A new report by the Economic Policy Institute says the isolation of socially and economically disadvantaged African-American students is increasing. Black students, according to the report, are more segregated than 40 years ago.
Although Black student achievement has steadily risen during this period, the achievement gap still persists as socio-economic disparities continue to be an obstacle African-Americans face, according to Richard Rothstein, author of “For Public Schools, Segregation Then, Segregation Since: Education and the Unfinished March.”
“The achievement gap persists because the same social and instructional forces that have caused black student achievement to rise have apparently also caused white student achievement to rise,” Rothstein writes.
BET.com
August 29, 2013
1) The black unemployment rate has consistently been twice as high as the white unemployment rate for 50 years:
A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) notes that this gap hasn’t closed at all since 1963. Back then, the unemployment rate was 5 percent for whites and 10.9 percent for blacks. Today, it’s 6.6 percent for whites and 12.6 percent for blacks.
The Washington Post
August 29, 2013
The March on Washington had a more formal title at the time: the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Organized labor played a notable role in the event, though it’s perhaps best recalled that the executive board of the AFL-CIO withheld formal support. At the time of the march, in 1963, the unemployment rate for black Americans was 10.9%, more than double the 5% jobless rate among white Americans, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Today, 6.6% of whites and 12.6% of blacks are unemployed.
MarketWatch
August 29, 2013
Also on Wednesday, Heidi Shierholz, EPI economist, discussed with Bloomberg’s Trish Reagan the state of the U.S. labor market, wage growth stagnation, and income inequality.
Bloomberg
August 28, 2013
The Economic Policy Institute has been producing regular reports under the banner of “The Unfinished March” to emphasize what it says is the unfinished economic history of the march. Demands at the march also were made for decent housing, adequate and integrated education, a federal full employment jobs program, a national minimum wage that would be the equivalent of more than $13 an hour in today’s dollars.
The value of today’s $7.25-an-hour minimum wage is $2 less than the minimum wage in 1968, according to the institute.
“To truly honor the march, we also have to recognize the unfinished demands,” said Algernon Austin, director of race, ethnicity and the economy program at the Economic Policy Institute.
AP
August 27, 2013
This deceleration of growth effectively predates sequestration, but nonetheless coincides (contrary to popular perception) with rapid reduction in the federal budget deficit as a share of GDP — a trend that will continue to restrain growth. On this front, the inaptness of the “cliff” metaphor surely didn’t help.
As Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute and I argued (PDF), the false dichotomy implied by a cliff was a poor framing of both the problem and policy choices actually at hand. This framing helped suggest that the eventual lame duck budget deal was successful because the economy didn’t crash in January 2013. But the budget deal didn’t resolve the problem of deficits closing too quickly, which always risked an ongoing deceleration in growth before andafter January, not an immediate double-dip recession.
The Fiscal Times
August 27, 2013
Gaping disparities between blacks and whites exist when it comes to unemployment rates (12.6 versus 6.6 percent in July, according to the Labor Department); life expectancy (75 versus 79 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention); median family wealth ($4,900 versus $97,000, according to the Economic Policy Institute); and incarceration rates (blacks are 13 percent of the population, but represent 38 percent of inmates in federal and state prisons, according to the Sentencing Project).
The Hill
August 27, 2013
While much ground has been gained with the end of state-sanctioned segregation, blacks overall are still more likely to be undereducated, unemployed and live in substandard housing compared to whites in America, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute.
And by all measures, blacks in America still lag behind whites and other groups in overall economic wealth, said author Algernon Austin, who directs the EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy, and put together the report.
“If we want to honor the march, we have to celebrate what was achieved, but also the unrealized dreams.
NY Daily News
August 27, 2013
In 2013, it’s jarring to realize just how much of Dr. King’s dream remains unrealized. For example, take these sobering statistics, from a recent Economic Policy Institute report by Algernon Austin:
[T]oday, nearly half of poor black children live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty; however, only a little more than a tenth of poor white children live in similar neighborhoods.
[Snip]
In the late 1960s, 76.6 percent of black children attended majority black schools. In 2010, 74.1 percent of black children attended majority nonwhite schools.
[Snip]
From the 1960s to today, the black unemployment rate has been about 2 to 2.5 times the white unemployment rate. In 2012, the black unemployment rate was 14.0 percent, 2.1 times the white unemployment rate (6.6 percent) and higher than the average national unemployment rate of 13.1 percent during the Great Depression, from 1929 to 1939.
Washington Monthly
August 27, 2013