The Impact of Single-Parent Households and Immigration on Unemployment Gap

As early as 1960, many researchers started to analyze the differences in the unemployment rate of African American males and their white counterparts. Over time the gap increased dramatically and was thus seen as a cause for concern. The main period, which is usually taken as the start date of the widening gap, was 1980. According to Robert W. Fairlie (Robert W Fairlie, 1997) the difference in wages and unemployment between the two main racial groups began roughly during the 1940’s to the 1950’s. This could be attributed to the Great Migration of blacks from the rural south to high unemployment regions. This also coincided with a decrease in the demand for farm labor in the south, which was the number one employer of African Americans. By the 1960’s the difference in the unemployment gap had risen to a 2:1 ratio. In other words, for every two white males with jobs, only one black male had a job. This further widened to a peak of 2.5 in the 1980’s.

The gap was also highlighted once again during the recession that occurred in 2008. While the unemployment rate in general widened during this period, the unemployment rate for blacks increased at a faster rate. This is in line with the work of Christian Weller (Weller and Fields, 2011). In his paper, he showed that the unemployment rate of African Americans increased more rapidly regardless of education, age, sex or gender during a recession. In his paper he also introduced a new phenomena known as “first fired, last hired”. This refers to the fact that at the onset of a job downturn, the first people to go are the blacks even when all the necessary factors are controlled.

Now that we have taken a look at explaining what the gap refers to, the next question that would need to be tackled is: What factors cause this unemployment gap? This is usually the source of a huge amount of debate by many researchers. According to Andy Kroll (Andy Kroll, 2011) the ratio resists almost any form of explanation. He explains that the gap has existed for a long time and even when the manufacturing sector was employing a lot of people, the gap still persisted. Even when it was adjusted for educational attainment, he claims that the gap still persists. He therefore puts most of the blame on the persistence of institutional racism.

Other authors take different viewpoints. The passage of the civil rights act of 1964 meant that it is illegal to discriminate against any potential worker due to his race. This would slightly nullify Kroll’s argument. Western and petit highlight this in a paper (Western et al, 1999) by hypothesizing that the main cause of the gap is the huge difference between the incarceration rates of the two races. As of 1999, more than 20% of the non-working black males were in jail compared to 2% of whites. Using sample selection, they also postulated that unemployment ratio explained most of the difference in the average wage rate of the two races.

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