Having the coveted "government job" has long been a sign of economic stability among African Americans. But since the current recession began, federal, state and local governments have slashed public-sector jobs, hurting blacks the most.
As Janell Ross of the Huffington Post reports:
Since the beginning of 2008, some 375,000 government jobs have been eliminated, according to the Labor Department.
The cuts fall with marked impact on African Americans. Nearly 21 percent of the nation's working black adults hold government jobs, as compared to some 17 percent of white workers and 15 percent of Latinos. Public agencies are the single largest employer for black men, and the second most common for black women.
The disproportionate vulnerability of African-American employees to the impacts of government budget cuts helps explain why black workers have fared so much worse than other slices of the population since the recession's end. In May, the unemployment rate among black Americans reached 16.2 percent, up from 15.5 percent a year earlier. By contrast, white unemployment was eight percent, an improvement from the 8.8 percent level of a year earlier.
With figures like these, discussions among African Americans about the marriageability of those with "good gov'ment jobs" may increasingly become obsolete.
Read more at the Huffington Post.
In other news: Can Marriage Equality Save the Black Family?