Abstract
African American males have one of the lowest rates of postsecondary educational attainment and the highest rate of incarceration of any group in the USA. This reality translates into Black males having the lowest labor force participation in the nation. While Black and Hispanic women have joined the labor market in increased numbers since the 1990s, Black males continue to have a 25–30 % gap in labor market participation compared to White men. Causes of these problems may include discrimination in the labor market and the decrease in available earnings for low-skilled individuals that dates back to the 1970s. Black men may further marginalize themselves from mainstream values and institutions, such as schooling and marriage, by engagement in criminal activity and decreased employment. One way to increase labor market participation among Black males is to expand programs that link high school-aged youth with postsecondary education or careers. Examples are Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID), a college readiness program, and career Academies, which help low-income students move from high school to college or careers. Further, there should be increased assistance for ex-offenders and noncustodial parents, including developing transitional jobs, providing better reentry and fatherhood programs, and managing child support arrears more effectively.
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Notes
- 1.
The data are drawn from the Outgoing Rotation Groups of the Current Populations Surveys (CPS). See Holzer and Offner (2002) for more discussion of samples and their characteristics.
- 2.
If anything, the recession since 2008 has exacerbated these gaps, though here we focus primarily on longer-term trends.
- 3.
These tabulations are drawn from Hill et al. (2009) and reflect survey outcomes for young people in their early 20s that are drawn from round eight of the panel or earlier.
- 4.
The measure of incarceration is drawn not only on self-reports, which are notoriously downward biased, but also on the extent to which some youth were interviewed while in prison. Short spells of incarceration, in between annual survey rounds or among those who attrite from the sample, would still be missed here.
- 5.
The higher rates of unmarried parenthood reported among young Black women than men might represent a greater reluctance of the men to self-report this status in the survey, or the possibility that the fathers of the children of young Black women might be older than the women themselves. Racial gaps in incarceration rates among men grow wider as they age, with roughly one out of three young Black men being incarcerated by age 35 (Raphael 2006).
- 6.
For economists, “elasticity” measures the extent to which economic activity responds to changes in the price of such activity. Labor supply is elastic if potential workers withdraw from the labor market as their wages deteriorate; it is more inelastic if they remain in the labor force and continue to work at these lower wages.
- 7.
While empirical support for the notion that declining labor market opportunities for men has been somewhat limited, some evidence appears in Blau et al. (2000) and Moffitt (2001). It is clear that the improvement in labor market opportunities of women relative to men tends to reduce marriage rates, and this relative improvement for women has been greatest in the Black community.
- 8.
For instance, only part of the earnings of the second earner might be counted in determining overall income and therefore EITC eligibility. The earnings levels at which EITC benefits begin to phase out might also be higher for two-parent then one-parent households.
- 9.
The evidence to date on postprogram impacts of transitional jobs programs for ex-offenders is mixed. While none seems to have lasting impacts on employment or earnings, The Center for Employment Opportunity in New York City was successful at reducing recidivism rates for those who entered right after release (Zweig et al. 2010). In contrast, the more recent Transitional Jobs Reentry Demonstration showed less positive impacts on this outcome (Redcross et al. 2010).
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Holzer, H.J. (2015). Recent Employment Trends Among Black Men and Their Policy Implications. In: Bangs, R., Davis, L. (eds) Race and Social Problems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0863-9_5
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