Twenty percent of the federal workforce is African-American, compared to about 13 percent of the nation's total workforce. The jobs they hold are predominantly in the lower part of the government pay scale. So a 35-day government shutdown, with the loss of two paychecks, hit the African-American community particularly hard.
That includes Cheryl Monroe, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration chemist in Detroit. "People say 'save for a rainy day' and you're always saving, but when there is no check, that's a hurricane not a rainy day." She adds, "White people have the more lucrative jobs in the government. They are able to save, able to put money away for six months or a year's worth of salary. It's harder for black people. We're always starting at the bottom."
That's not just the anecdotal perception of one federal worker. Joseph McCartin, a labor history professor at Georgetown University says "African-Americans, despite the opportunities, have generally not had all of the opportunities that whites have had and tend to be more concentrated in the bottom half of the federal workforce and are the most vulnerable to be hurt in a shutdown situation."
That's in the federal workforce. Among federal contractors who were also screwed out of paycheck by Trump, the population hit particularly hard is the disabled, and they're not likely to see any back pay. There are thousands of people working for nonprofits that have federal contracts through a set-aside program that employs disabled workers. These programs operate in almost every state, and provide janitors and maintenance workers and a variety of support positions.
"We have more than 2,000 people with disabilities that were working on federal contracts that aren't today," John Kelly, vice president of government relations and public policy at one of these organizations, SourceAmerica, told reporters last week. "These are people who may have searched for this job for years, it really works for them and is a really key part of their life. And now they don't know if they're going to get that job back or not." That's just one organization.
Again, the contractors aren't getting back pay for their lost hours unless Congress acts to give it to them. They're aren't just living with the uncertainty of how they're going to pay the bills, but what happens to them in three weeks’ time if Trump insists on doing this all over again.