The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there were 10.5 million job openings in the United States at the start of December 2022, 1.7 open jobs for every unemployed worker. Part of the job availability was because of retirements by “Baby Boomers,” people born between 1945 and 1965, many who are now in their sixties and seventies.
But job availability is not open across the board and in every community. The COVID pandemic devastated the restaurants, retail, and recreation industries that generally provide entry-level jobs for younger workers. According to a report released in December 2022 by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, despite overall employment gains, younger workers continued to experience double-digit unemployment in the state. In New York City, the overall unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds was almost 18% and at 24% it was significantly higher for young men. The highest unemployment rates were for young Hispanics (23.3%), Asians (23.3%), and Blacks (18.5%), although unemployment for young white workers also remained elevated (16.2%). This is an especially frightening report because it is vital to their work and family lives and the American economy that younger workers develop the habit of steady employment.
A series of studies published by the Center for American Progress documented how the COVID-19 pandemic exposed structural racism as the primary cause of a persistent Black-white unemployment gap. While overall unemployment in the United States declined from 14.7% in April 2020 to 8.4% in August 2020, unemployment rates did not fall for everyone. Black unemployment was 16.6% in May was still 13.2% in August when the white unemployment rate was only 6.9%. This reflects a historic pattern since 1973 when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began the disaggregating data by race of Black unemployment roughly doubling white unemployment. Accord to this pattern is a result of structural racism including major disparities in family wealth as a result of housing discrimination, continuing discrimination by employers, and mass incarceration and the difficulty of people reintegrating into society and work.
A Brookings Institution study found that the employment gap is even worse in many majority-African American metropolitan areas. Prior to the COVID pandemic, the unemployment rate for Blacks in Newark, New Jersey was about 16%, it was 17.4% in Detroit, Michigan, and almost 25% in Flint, Michigan. In Washington, D.C., the African American unemployment rate was six times higher than the white rate and it was more than five times higher in Atlanta and New Orleans. Nationally, African Americans have higher unemployment rates across all educational attainment levels and age cohorts including African American military veterans. This report reflected a period when the United States labor market had completed a record 109 months of uninterrupted job growth with the overall unemployment rate at its lowest level in 50 years. The Brookings study concluded that if unemployment rates were this high for white workers it would be considered a national crisis on par with the Great Depression.