The American economy is getting better the bean counters tell us….
Some places are inching towards a $15 a hour mininum wage …..
But one thing that the Republicans have ALWAYS wanted is also happening….
Government jobs numbers are shrinking…
The effect on Blacks, and others, is going to be pronounced …..
For any number of reasons, the Great Recession unraveled much of the progress made by the black middle class. Leading up to the mortgage crisis, black families tended to have a higher proportion of their wealth tied up in their homes. And regardless of their income, black families were much more likely to be rejected for conventional mortgages and pushed into high-cost subprime loans. All of this meant that when housing prices turned down, the black-white wealth gap yawned. As of 2013, white households were, on average, 13 times wealthier than black households, the biggest gap since 1989, according to Pew Research Center data.
Declining tax revenue led to tightened state budgets, which led to tens of thousands of layoffs for public-sector employees. And during the recovery, public workers became easy political targets precisely because of their labor protections. Collective-bargaining rights, pension funds and mandatory raises look like unnecessary drains on state coffers to a work force increasingly unfamiliar with such benefits. And when the layoffs came, black Americans experienced a disproportionate share of the ill effects…..
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As a result of all these economic punishments, a recession that set America back half a decade may have set black families back a whole generation, if not longer.
Manufacturing jobs have been battered over the past few decades, thanks to offshoring and automation — a trend that looks set to continue. But that is not to say that all good blue-collar jobs are disappearing. Many niches are growing: Wind-turbine service technicians (the people who fix those giant, high-tech windmills) and commercial divers (the people who do underwater repairs on oil rigs) are two of the fastest-growing middle-class jobs.
And because the public sector provides so many essential services, cuts to it have a cascading effect. Hospitals close, and people have to drive farther away for medical care. Teachers’ aides lose their positions, and local kids no longer have the same degree of special-education attention…..
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