The collapse of venerable American institutions like the auto industry and banking sector signal unmistakably the emergence of a new economic order, presenting the question of where blacks and other minorities will position themselves under this new paradigm.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is the economic agenda propelled into law by the nation’s first black president. The current chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors, Christina Romer, issued on January 9 a 13-page document prepared by then President-elect Obama’s economic team titled “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.”
The plan breaks out the various industries that jobs are projected to be created in with an injection of over $700 billion in federal stimulus money, projecting that 3.6 million jobs will be created by 2010. The plan lists 14 different sectors of the economy in which jobs are expected to be created, with the following being the major industries and their percentage of the total jobs projected to be created:
1. Construction 18% 678,000 jobs
2. Retail Trade 16% 604,000 jobs
3. Leisure and Hospitality 14% 499,000 jobs
4. Manufacturing 11% 408,000 jobs
5. Professional & Business Services 9% 345,000 jobs
6. Education & Health Services 6% 240,000 jobs
7. Government – Total 6% 244,000 jobs
8. Wholesale Trade 4% 158,000 jobs
“The sensitivity of employment and unemployment to the overall health of the economy varies across demographic groups of the population,” the Romer plan states.
“For example, African-American, Hispanic, young, less-educated, and male workers all tend to suffer disproportionately during recessions. … Historically, when unemployment falls overall, these groups tend to experience particularly large employment gains.”
Interestingly, however, the plan offers a gender breakdown by industry of the jobs projected to be created by the stimulus package, but not a breakdown by race or ethnicity.
The plan projects that women will comprise 13 percent of the construction jobs created, 50 percent of retail, 53 percent of leisure and hospitality, 29 percent of manufacturing, 45 percent of professional and business, 77 percent of education and health, 57 percent of government and 31 percent of wholesale trade jobs.
If the administration expects that more construction opportunities will mean blacks and minorities will get their fair share, then clearly that will be insufficient to create the new economic order of inclusion now needed by this nation.
This point is well made in the Executive Summary of the “Road to Good Jobs: Patterns of Employment in the Construction Industry,” prepared by Todd Swanstrom of the University of Missouri–St. Louis, and presented in September 2008 as the Second Annual Report to the Transportation Equity Network:
“The looming shortage of construction workers presents an opportunity for disadvantaged groups to obtain good jobs without displacing current workers,” Swanstrom reports.
“Our study of the largest 25 metropolitan areas in the country [including St. Louis], however, found that both African Americans and women were employed in construction at rates well below their participation in the overall workforce. Indeed, if blacks were employed in construction at the same rate that they are employed in the overall work-force in 2006, we estimate that 137,044 more blacks would be employed in construction in our 25 metropolitan areas.”
July 12 of this year will mark the 10th anniversary of the 1999 morning rush hour shutdown of Interstate 70, in which over 100 blacks were arrested for their civil disobedience protest about the lack of jobs and contracts going to blacks on construction projects like the one then occurring on the highway. From that protest, a construction training school known as the Construction Prep Center (CPC) was established in 2000, and it has since introduced and ushered into the construction industry close to 1,000 minority workers.
In its January 2009 report to the Missouri Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration, the CPC reported that, “More than 80 CPC graduate apprentices have been hired on St. Louis construction and construction-related work during the past 15 months (CYO7-08/08-09) as detailed below.” The CPC report then lists the names of each of the apprentices, their employers and their construction trades.
For Obama’s economic stimulus package to close the huge racial gap and disparity in the construction industry, which is vital to the economic empowerment of the minority community, there will be a need for many more CPCs. And hopefully, with an African-American president, less of a need for the action which brought it about.
Eric E. Vickers is attorney for the Minority Inclusion Alliance.