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Black America Is Getting Screwed: Shocking New Study Highlights the Depths of Economic Disparities

Forty-seven years after the Poor People’s Campaign ended, political discussion in liberal activist circles has bifurcated in unnecessary ways. There are separate economic and racial justice movements, and as my Salon colleague Joan Walsh points out, political leaders too often speak to only one or the other. But these movements are different facets of one fight; if black lives matter, surely their economic lives matter too.

In the media
David Dayen

How the Retail Industry Keeps People of Color in Poverty

The second largest source of jobs for black people in the country is also one of the worst industries to work in. Although big retailers tout their “entry level” positions as a path to the middle class, retail work is built on dead-end jobs that perpetuate racial inequality.

In the media
Michelle Chen

Study Finds Minority Retail Workers Get Lower Pay

African-American and Latino retail industry employees earn lower wages than their white colleagues, according to a new study.

In the media
Tom Huddleston Jr.

The Racial Wage Gap in Retail Is Atrocious

According to a new report, minorities who work in retail earn less and are less likely to be promoted than their white counterparts. The study, released yesterday by the NAACP and public-policy group Demos, found that retailers pay black and Latino full-time salespeople about 75 percent of what they pay white workers in the same positions.

In the media
Erica Schwiegershausen

New Demos/NAACP Report Reveals How Retail Industry Perpetuates Racial Inequality

Black and Latino Retail Workers Are More Likely to be Underemployed and Underpaid

“The striking persistence of racial inequities in employment is present in the retail industry and beyond, but these norms do not have to continue.”

Press release/statement

Not So Quick on Canceling Debt

In FY 2014, per-student state appropriations for higher education were 24 percent below the funding level in 1989. The result, also shown in the chart, is that net tuition revenue (the tuition received by public colleges and universities after grant aid is subtracted) has more than doubled during this period. Considering that three-quarters of all undergraduates are enrolled in public institutions, it’s not surprising that this increase in tuition prices has led to a large increase in student loan borrowing.
In the media
Donald E. Heller

Retail Industry Fosters Racial Income Inequality: Naacp, Demos Study

The NAACP and Demos, a public policy organization, have partnered to produce a new paper, “The Retail Race Divide: How the Retail Industry is Perpetuating Racial Inequality in the 21st Century” that finds a disproportionate number of Black and Latino workers in the retail industry live below the poverty line.
 
“Like the overall retail workforce, the vast majority of Black retail workers are adults,” says the report in its Key Findi
In the media
Tonya Garcia

May Jobs Report: 43 Percent of All Jobs Gains Were Low-Wage

The May jobs report from the Department of Labor is out, and while 280,000 jobs were added to the economy, 43% of all job gains were in the low wage sector. 

The overall unemployment rate is 5.5%, and the rate for African Americans and Latinos is still higher than the rate for whites, coming in at 10.2% and 6.7% respectively. The unemployment rate for whites is currently 4.7%. 

In the media
Adriana Maestas

Here's How Much Students Spent at Public Colleges Compared to Total U.S. Student Debt

"We're at a really interesting and troubling point where student debt has become sort of normalized," Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at the think tank Demos, told Mic. "Tuition used to be low enough and grant aid used to be high enough that total cost of attendance at higher university was manageable with a summer job."

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In the media
Jon Levine