“font-size: small”>The ax fell
without sound or shadow: Tatiana Gallego was suddenly called into
human resources and laid off from her job as an admissions
counselor for a fashion college.
“font-size: small”>“The way
people tried to explain it to me was, I was the last one hired so I
was the first one out,” said Gallego, 25, who had worked there for
17 months.
“font-size: small”>Last hired,
first fired: This generations-old cliché rings bitterly true for
millions of Latinos and Blacks who are losing jobs at a faster rate
than the general population during this punishing
recession.
“font-size: small”>Much of the
disparity is due to a concentration of Latinos and Blacks in
construction, blue-collar or service-industry jobs that have been
decimated by the economic meltdown. And Black unemployment has been
about double the rate for whites since the government began
tracking those categories in the early 1970s.
“font-size: small”>But this
recession is cutting a swath through the professional classes as
well, which can be devastating to people who recently arrived
there.
“font-size: small”>Since the
recession began in December 2007, Latino unemployment has risen 4.7
percentage points, to 10.9 percent, according to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics. Black unemployment has risen 4.5 points, to 13.4
percent. White unemployment has risen 2.9 points, to 7.3
percent.
“font-size: small”>Gallego,
whose parents were born in Colombia, graduated from the University
of Rhode Island. Her mother is self-employed, and her stepfather
works in construction.
“font-size: small”>She was
stunned when she was told to pack up and leave by the end of the
day because enrollment was down at her New York City school. She
said she had recently received a positive performance review, and
her bosses were planning to send her to a
conference.
“font-size: small”>“Maybe I just
don’t know that much about the business world, because I felt like
I did more, I went above and beyond more than other people in my
office did,” she said.
“font-size: small”>William
Darity, a professor of economics and African-American studies at
Duke University, said “Blacks and Latinos are relative latecomers
to the professional world … so they are necessarily the most
vulnerable.”
“font-size: small”>“We don’t
have those older roots to anchor us in the professional world,”
Darity said. “We don’t have the same nexus of contacts, the same
kind of seniority.”
“font-size: small”>There are no
recent government statistics that measure jobs lost by race and
income. But Darity and others believe that professional Latinos and
blacks are more likely to lose their jobs in the
recession.
“font-size: small”>“Many times
blacks and Latinos are the last to be hired, so naturally they are
first to be fired,” said Jerry Medley, who has been in the
executive search business for 30 years.
“font-size: small”>“Not saying
that it’s racism,” Medley said, “but if a manager or a senior
executive is looking at a slate of individuals and has to let one
of them go, chances are he or she will not let the person go that
they spend a lot of time with at the country club or similar
places.”
“font-size: small”>The less
wealth you have, the harder unemployment hits. Darity cited 2002
data that showed Black households with a median net worth of
$6,000, Latino households with a median of $8,000, and white
households with a median of $90,000.
“font-size: small”>Philip Salter
was creative director for a Chicago advertising firm where about 75
percent of the revenue came from a contract with a Fortune 500
company to create ads targeted at minorities. When the firm lost
that contract plus two general-market accounts, Salter’s job
evaporated.
“font-size: small”>“When
companies cut back their ad dollars, minority budgets are where
they start,” said Salter, 62, who is Black. “Unfortunately in this
business, most clients just view (minority advertising) as an
overlay or meeting an obligation that social organizations might
place on them.”
“font-size: small”>His last day
was in January 2008. With alimony payments and two kids in college,
Salter moved from his four-bedroom house into an apartment and has
scraped by on consulting gigs.
“font-size: small”>Salter’s
mother worked as a housekeeper, and his father was a custodian.
Before his divorce, Salter’s stepdaughter and her four children
lived with him for many years.
“font-size: small”>Professional
Blacks “don’t usually start out with an inheritance,” he said. “On
top of that, quite often things happen in our families to cause us
stress. Maybe an unexpected child or grandchild, or drug problems
could occur. When you try to set aside money to put your kids
through college, all of a sudden you have to say, ‘I can’t let this
family member fall and become homeless.’
“font-size: small”>“I would say
eight out of 10 people I know have a similar
situation.”
“font-size: small”>Then there
are those clinging to the bottom of the ladder, laid off from
lower-paying jobs.
“font-size: small”>For them,
“once the primary breadwinner loses his or her job, there isn’t
much backup,” said Harry Holzer, former chief economist for the
Department of Labor who now is a professor at Georgetown University
and the Urban Institute.
“font-size: small”>The Great
Depression ended after the government created a “safety net” of
wide-ranging social-assistance programs. Since then, the overall
unemployment rate peaked in 1981-1982, at 10.8 percent on a monthly
basis, Holzer said.
“font-size: small”>Economists
believe we could reach that level in the current recession, Holzer
said — but he added that unlike in the 1980s, today the safety net
has been largely dismantled by restrictions placed on welfare and
unemployment eligibility.
“font-size: small”>“You worry
about populations of concentrated poverty and having less access to
the safety net,” Holzer said. “It could lead to social unrest,
higher crime rates — no one knows.”
“font-size: small”>“It will
obviously have an effect on the crime rate,” said Maya Wiley,
director of the Center for Social Inclusion, which recently issued
a report stating that nonwhites are bearing the heaviest burden
during the recession.
“font-size: small”>“There also
are all sorts of health-related issues connected with that,” Wiley
said. “We could see higher rates of everything from homicides to
tuberculosis.”
“font-size: small”>As racism
wanes and Blacks and Latinos advance up the economic ladder, many
cite this progress as proof that it would be unfair to offer
race-based remedies to those left behind. Even many minorities have
embraced themes of self-help and personal
responsibility.
“font-size: small”>Others, like
the Duke professor Darity, say that America “has never come to
terms with racial economic inequality.”
“font-size: small”>“The current
situation,” Darity said, “is reinforcing and widening those
inequalities.”
