Business
Black Economic gains reversed in Great Recession
BALTIMORE (AP) – For the black community, where unemployment continues to rise, job loss has knocked them out of the middle class and back into poverty…
Chris Wilder, a Philadelphia journalist, lost his job in 2008 as the media industry suffered huge losses. Unemployment benefits amounted to about one-third of his salary. Ever since they ran out, his income has been near zero, other than sporadic freelance work.
No more family vacations. No more trips to the mall. No more filling the grocery cart.
If not for a policy in his apartment co-op to assist people who lose their jobs, “I might be living with my mother,” he says.
He has felt depression and anxiety. He’s gone from a six-figure salary to having to check his balance before using his bank card. “I miss being able to go into a store and go off budget,” he says. “Now, when I go to shop for something, I have to stick to exactly what I came to get. I never have money to buy anything else.”
Wilder, 43, grew up solidly middle class, the son of a newspaper editor and a college administrator. Now the single parent of a 15-year-old, he has managed to keep his son in cleats and baseball camps, but thoughts of dying poor have crept into his mind. All of his savings are gone.
“It’s definitely harder for black people to get jobs,” Wilder says. “With the economy as bad as it is, people are hiring nephews and family friends and friends of friends. It’s hard for black people to break that cycle. We do not own or even run the big companies.”
“It’s hard to keep jobs as well, because they’re gonna ‘last hired/first fired’ you,” he adds.
Wilder isn’t giving up on finding a job in his field, “but I should.
“I call everyone. I send resumes. It is extremely rare that I get a call back,” he says. “When I was growing up, I never imagined there would be a time when I was out of work for three years.”
College-educated blacks fared worse than their white counterparts in the recession. In 2007, unemployment for college-educated whites was 1.8 percent; for college-educated blacks it was 2.7 percent. Now, the college-educated unemployment rate is 3.9 percent for whites and 7 percent for blacks.
“I’ve definitely played by the rules,” Wilder says. He’s not desperate enough to break the law, but “I see why people become drug dealers.”
