College Degree No Longer Guarantees Jobs for Blacks
By Frederick H. Lowe
Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from TheNorthStarNews.com
(TriceEdneyWire.com) - For generations, Black parents' mantra was to tell their children to get a good education so they will get a good job. But Black parents will have to revise their thinking because a college degree no longer guarantees African-American graduates a job or a career.
This is because of the poor economy, which has affected everyone, and wide-spread job discrimination that affects African Americans, especially black men, according to a recently published study by Center for Economic and Policy Research, which is based in Washington, D.C.
The report, titled, "A College Degree is No Guarantee," reported that in 2013, 12.4 percent of Black college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27 years old were unemployed, compared to a 5.6 percent unemployment rate of all college graduates. The jobless rate for Black college graduates was up 7.8 percentage points in 2013 compared to 4.6 percentage points in 2007, the same year the Great Recession began in late December.
Last year, 55.9 percent of black employed college graduates were underemployed or working in jobs that did not require a college degree, the report stated.
Black college graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fare somewhat better than otherAfrican-American college graduates. But the jobless rate among Black STEM graduate was 10 percent and the underemployment rate was 32 percent. Technical degrees offer the best chance of landing a job for black college graduates, followed by degrees in leisure and hospitality and social sciences. Black college graduates with degrees in architecture, construction, communications, agriculture and natural resources had the worse chance of landing a full-time job.
"In part, these outcomes reflect the disproportionate negative effect of economic downturns on young workers, and in part, they reflect ongoing discrimination in the labor market," wrote Janelle Jones a research associate at CEPR and John Schmitt, a senior research economist at CEPR. "A college degree blunts both these effects relative to young black workers without a degree, but college is not a guarantee against either set of forces."
Still, however, companies refuse to hire Black men. The study mentions two tests, one in Milwaukee and the other in New York. In 2003, Black and White job hunters with fictitious resumes applied for jobs. Black applicants were half as likely to receive a company call back for a second interview compared to white applicants.
Things had not changed that much in 2009 in the liberal city of New York.
"Black men were less likely to receive a call back than equally qualified white men, and black man with no criminal record fared worse than recently incarcerated white men. Blacks also are last in hiring's racial hierarchy. Employers favor white men and then Hispanic men and finally black men, reported the study, which does not mention Asian or Indian men. This year in Chicago, 60 partners in a law firms rated the same legal brief consistently lower when told the author was black, compared to when they were told the brief's author was white. In addition, the reviewers were more likely to point out spelling, grammar and technical errors when under the impression the author was black," the study reported.
A 2011 study also found that more than half of management, professional and related occupations - those where many college graduates work - have an underrepresentation of Black men.
The study reported, "Meanwhile, in typically low-wage service occupations, black men were overrepresented. The authors estimate that a $10,000 increase in the average annual wage of an occupation was associated with a seven-percentage point decrease in the proportion of black men in the same occupation."