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Black Unemployment Rises Even As Overall Jobless Rate Drops
By: huffingtonpost.comPosted On: 04/05/2011 8:20 A
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Two weeks. That was the longest stretch of time Michael Seals, 58, has ever looked for work. That was the longest stretch, until now.
Two weeks. That was the longest stretch of time Michael Seals, 58, has ever looked for work. That was the longest stretch, until now.
Seals, an Atlanta native, has watched his hometown grow from charming city to thriving metropolis -- and the fortunes of many fellow African Americans grow with it. He describes himself as a man who is good with his hands, having spent nearly a decade as a supervisor at an area cabinet company. The firm specialized in outfitting kitchens and bathrooms in the high-rises that changed Atlanta's skyline, and in the subdivisions that transformed what had been the countryside into sprawling suburbia, in places as far away as North Carolina and Tennessee.
"By 2008, the housing market here, it just plain fell out," Seals said. "The owner came to me and said they had to cut back. That was the end of my job and the beginning of a very rude awakening."
Overall unemployment fell to a better-than-expected 8.8 percent in March as the economy added roughly 216,000 jobs, the Labor Department announced Friday. Those are the kind of figures that economists say indicate a strengthening recovery, though they caution that it's well below the rate of job growth the nation needs to see -- uninterrupted, for years -- if employment is ever to return to a level comparable to the years before the Great Recession.
Still, labor-market watchers and many ordinary Americans may be breathing shallow sighs of relief. But others, like Seals, cannot.
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