In Job Hunt, College Degree Still Doesn’t Close Racial Gap

by Andrés T. Tapia –

With Barack Obama in the White House, it seems like race would no longer hinder African-Americans who are on the job market. But according to The New York Times, there is ample evidence that racial inequities remain when it comes to hiring.

Black joblessness has long far outstripped that of whites. But strikingly, the disparity for the first 10 months of 2009, as the recession dragged on, was even more pronounced for those with college degrees than those without. Education, it seems, does not level the playing field — in fact, it appears to have made it more uneven.

According to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for black male college graduates 25 and older in 2009 was nearly twice that of white male college graduates — 8.4% compared with 4.4%.

Various academic studies have confirmed that black job seekers continue to have a harder time than whites. A study published several years ago in The American Economic Review titled “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?” found that applicants with black-sounding names received 50% fewer callbacks than those with white-sounding names. A more recent study, published this year in The Journal of Labor Economics found white, Asian, and Hispanic managers tended to hire more whites and fewer blacks than black managers did.

Black job seekers interviewed by the Times conceded that race can be beneficial in some cases, particularly with companies that have diversity programs. But many said they sensed that such opportunities had been cut back over the years and even more during the downturn. Others speculated there was now more of a tendency to deem diversity efforts unnecessary after Barack Obama’s triumph.

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