Report Finds Hispanics Faring Better Than Blacks

By TANZINA VEGA  APRIL 2, 2014

Hispanics generally fare better than blacks in rankings of inequality in American life, according to a new report by the National Urban League to be released on Thursday.

The annual report, called the State of Black America, for the first time this year also included a ranking of income inequality and unemployment for 77 American cities that had large black populations and 83 cities that had large Hispanic populations, based on data from the American Community Survey, an annual survey by the Census Bureau. ...

Nationwide, black Americans are twice as likely to be unemployed as whites (13.1 percent of blacks versus 6.5 percent of whites, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics). The rate for Hispanics was 9.1 percent. The report also focused on underemployment which includes those who are jobless and not looking or working part-time jobs but desiring full-time work. According to the report, the underemployment rate for black workers was 20.5 percent, compared with 18.4 percent for Hispanic workers and 11.8 percent for white workers.

The report ranked metropolitan statistical areas where the unemployment gap between blacks and whites was both larger and smaller than the national average. Unemployment levels include those who are actively looking for work.

Topping the list with the smallest employment gap was the Augusta-Richmond County area in Georgia

Home of the Augusta National Golf Club

, where 13.3 percent of blacks are unemployed compared with 8.5 percent of whites, and blacks in that area are about 1.5 times more likely to be unemployed than whites. Other areas where the gap between black and white unemployment was smaller than the national average included the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario region in California, the Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville region in Florida, the Las Vegas metro area, and the Chattanooga, Tenn., metro area. 

In other words, there seems to be more employment equality in areas that are favorable to business and whites are less educated.

The biggest employment gap was found in Madison, Wis., where 18.5 percent of blacks are unemployed compared with 4.4 percent of whites.

Must be all those uneducated white rednecks in Madison keeping the black man down.

Other cities with gaps that are larger than the national average included Lancaster, Pa.; Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, Wis.; the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minn., metro area; the Des Moines metro area; and Baton Rouge, La.

Most of these are unionized rust belt blue state cities.

There were also differences in income between blacks and whites. The region with the smallest gap in median income between blacks and whites was Riverside, Calif., which also had one of the smallest unemployment gaps between the two groups. In that area, the median household income for blacks was $44,572 a year compared with $57,252 for whites.

Riverside County is traditionally Republican, although it's moving toward the Democrats due to demographic change. It has lots of jobs in logistics — i.e., the big warehouses that resort imports from China that land at the L.A.-Long Beach harbor are about an hour inland in places like Moreno Valley. Lots of South Central blacks looking for a better life away from gangs have moved to the Inland Empire.

In the Twin Cities metro area in Minnesota, one of the regions with the highest gap in unemployment between whites and blacks, the median household income for blacks was $28,784 a year compared with $71,376 for whites.

The Twin Cities are the most Scandinavian metropolis in the country. Paradoxically (but we ought to be used to this by now), Swedish-style policies tend to be good for Swedes and bad for blacks. They attract a lot of the poorest blacks (including African refugees).