I have eventually hit my one year mark of being unemployed. Since that year, it has ultimately hit me that the process of looking for a work can eventually make you feel under-educated, unqualified, skill-less, useless, and worthless. There is so much that you can do in a day pore over job sites looking for that small glimmer of hope that somebody actually thinks you are good enough to work for them.

Lucky for me, I am not close to go homeless or have my phone cut off because I have opted to become a socialite. No, I am kidding. I have wonderful parents who are not going to allow their son go homeless. It is difficult living at home, considering that today’s society believes that a male around my age should already be living on their own. Let me tell you, it wasn’t an easy decision either. Especially, when you have to suck up your pride and leave your independence. Since they are picking up my bills, the good thing is, I only have three, which are my college loans. Everything was already paid off before I was laid off. Nevertheless, here is what I have learned being a minority in search of a job. The job market is brutal and the concern every minority has about discrimination is all true. The unemployment rate that is quoted is a lie.
Last month, the Labor Department announced that the unemployment rate fell to a five-year low of 4.4% in October. However, the reality is, the job market is really stalling. Right before December, another report was published by the Labor Department that stated that there was an increase of newly laid-off workers – “new applications filed for the workweek ending Nov. 18 soared by a seasonally adjusted 12,000, to 321,000” and for the week ending Nov. 25, 357,000 cases claimed an increase of 34,000 from the previous week’s figure of 323,000. So it seems that for every new job that is being created, 2 to 3 or maybe 4 job positions are being eliminated. So once again, competition for a job remains high and the more time I am out of a job, the less attractive I become compared to a person who recently was laid off. There is a good post on a sound economic policy regarding unemployment, but this is not what my post is about is about hiring practices and how being an educated minority means shit right now.

While it is true that the overall US unemployment rate dropped, the Latino unemployment rate really has not changed that much. From June to August, the unemployment rate has not budged from 5.3% and increase to 5.4% in September, until October, which went down 4.7% from the recession that ended in November 2001, according to data published by the US Department of Labor. The data is questionable because the unemployed rate excludes discouraged and other workers who are no longer looking for work. They are considered “discouraged workers” because these are the people who have given up searching for work due to lack of success. The more discouraged workers there are, the less accurate statistics like the unemployment rate are in representing true labor market conditions.

One would assume me having a graduate degree and being a minority would have it easy landing a job. If one were to look at the unemployment rates among those with a college degree, well, it would look as if there are essentially no problems finding employment. The unemployment rate for people with a college degree is currently at 1.9%. One would assume that the only ones who are out of work are those who have decided changed jobs or those who lost their jobs but the data would indicate they are rapidly being picked up..

There is a dirty little secret that is really not being told when it comes to minority college graduates and employment and that has to do with the fact many people are buying into the view there is a demand to end affirmative action hiring practices. Many have hoped that the sustained economic boom in the 1990s would have made a significant dent in the nation’s persistent racial inequality. In fact, the growth did improve the absolute and relative economic positions of many minorities, however, not as much as some minority activists would have desired. In fact, a record has been set for the “longest ‘jobless recovery’ on record” which was spawned by the lack of job creation that followed the 2001 recession, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Even though it is being reported that the unemployment rates are low, it really is being masked, and continues to hide the weakness in the labor market. Another fact, ever since Bush has been in office, long-term unemployment has also gone beyond blue-collar workers and those with higher levels of education can no longer continue their degree to protect them from an unstable job market.

EPI has also found that the current “jobless recovery” has also taken a toll among African-Americans and Latinos, but more so among African-Americans. Although no comparison can be made between the current “jobless recovery” to the 1990s “jobless recovery” to give some type of indication for the future; it does, however, provide insight as to how the Bush Administration has screwed minorities left and right, especially African-Americans.

The study found African-Americans’ share of persistent unemployment expanded from 23.0% in the 1990s to 25.9% in the more recent slump and for Latinos it went from 11.1% to 13.3 percent. Amazingly, when it came to whites, it was the opposite. While the average for long-term unemployment increased by 2 percentage points for minorities, whites have faired well during the latest recession. The average share of long-term unemployment during the 1990s for whites was at 62.2% compared to the more recent slump of 53.7 percent. Moreover, EPI also found that long-term unemployment has become more of a problem among the more-educated population.

To make matters worse, effect of the latest recession on Latinos hardly have been examined closely and if any were done, it is hard to they don’t provide an accurate picture because the not all Latinos have been similarly affected by the recession because of the make-up of the group in terms of in terms of time in the US – ranging from newly arrived immigrants to US-born Latinos. This makes a big difference because generational status is closely tied to education, linguistic, and social assimilation. US-born Latinos face different challenges and experiences in the labor market than newly arrived Latinos. One of these differences may result in different job-search strategies due to education, English ability, and availability of social networks. In 2002, soon after the recession ended, a study was conducted for the Pew Hispanic Center by Arturo Gonzalez, an economist at the University of Arizona, the study found that unemployment among second-generation Latinos in more skilled occupations (professionals, managers, technicians and administrators) is higher than for non-Hispanics holding similar jobs.

Two years later, an analysis of the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau done by the Pew Hispanic Center showed that during the “jobless recovery” of 2004, gains for Latinos were not widespread. The group that captured the most jobs during that time were immigrant Latinos. However, median wages for Latinos not only slipped backwards but were considerably lower in comparison to the national median wage. And even two years later, the unemployment rate for US-born Hispanics, still remained high and showed no indication of dropping.

Labor market trends for the third generation – the U.S.-born children of U.S.-born parents–were mostly negative in this time period. For this group, employment fell in all quarters except the fourth quarter of 2003. By the first quarter of 2004, third-generation employment was down by 158,110 workers and unemployment was up by 41,805 in comparison to the first quarter of 2003. Over this period, the proportion of third-generation Latinos who were employed fell from 66.9 percent to 64.1 percent and the unemployment rate increased from 7.5 percent to 8.6 percent.

In terms employment gains and losses for Hispanics from the first quarter of 2003 to the first quarter of 2004, construction (380,492) was a major source of employment gains for Hispanics, following business services (167,499), transportation and warehousing (105,732) and personal, laundry, and private household services (71,157). Meanwhile, Latino workers suffered job losses in manufacturing of durable goods of 128,064. Other industries in which the number of employed Latinos dropped significantly include manufacturing of nondurable goods (-50,813), educational services (-33,579), and Communication, Information, Publishing & Broadcasting (-28,878). Interestingly, the principal sources of employment gains for non-Hispanic workers, were wholesale and retail trade (704,356), construction (392,404), finance, insurance, and real estate (313,566), and public administration (198,080).

There is also a big push to end affirmative action. This could be seen in the recent decision by the Supreme Court to hear a couple affirmative action cases regarding school desegregation, the future of affirmative action is now at stake. Legal experts say the cases being heard, are just as important as the University Michigan decisions, rulings in which the justices upheld the university’s law school affirmative program, but struck down a more numbers-oriented undergraduate admissions process.

During the job boom in the 1990s, evidence showed there was a decline in discriminatory behavior against minorities by employers, according to a recent study by the Urban Institute. They also found that demands for Latinos, African-Americans, welfare recipients and the short-term employed, as well as those without recent work experience have declined with rising unemployment rates and that many of those hiring patterns that occurred during the boom have now weakened following the 2001 recession period. If that is so, one does have to wonder what is to be expected to head into recession next year.

This find would indicate that history has this nasty tendency of repeating itself. Workers who were laid off in the 1960s and 70s were disproportionately minority, mostly African-American. The US Commission on Civil Rights found that during the recession of 1973 to 1974, 60% to 70% of laid-off workers were minority in areas where they were only 10% to 12% of the workforce. The reason affirmative action was put into place to right past wrongs where feasible. Now, affirmative action has become a joke. On May 1, 2006, the  United States Court of Appeals ruled against for promoting several minority firefighters who were ranked lower on eligibility lists over their white counterpart. The court ruled that the city could no longer base their decision to promote minorities to remedy the effects of past discrimination against minorities. In fact, the new rules regarding affirmative action hiring and promotion practices are based on the idea that minorities could no longer rely on a history of racial discrimination to justify the enactment of affirmative action programs. In fact, the viewed being held, especially the Supreme Court, is that affirmative action is no longer necessary because the impacts of past discrimination has been remedied.

The setting of a placement goal in an affirmative action plan means that recruiters have an added burden to try to ensure that applicant pools contain sufficient percentages of qualified women and minorities; it does not give a manager justification to hire someone because he or she is a minority, even if there is a goal in the job group. At all times, the most qualified person must be selected for the position, without regard to race, gender or any other protected category.

In other words, what just to be as long as the application pool contains my resume or anybody with a Spanish surname they will be ok, they don’t have to hire me. So what used to be a policy to provide minorities and women a chance to put your foot in the door, it is now, a policy that only allows minorities and women to stand in line, without the possibility of ever seeing the employer’s door. The door is officially shut. And I have personally seen it shut and slammed on my face and sadly, there is nothing I can do because the places I applied did allow me to stand the application in line, as for my future, it is still remains uncertain.

Hopefully, this Christmas I am able to find a job offer in my stocking instead of a lump of coal like the one I found last year.