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The Unemployment Rate for People Like You

164 points| araneae | 16 years ago |nytimes.com | reply

101 comments

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[+] patio11|16 years ago|reply
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I can't stand them editorially speaking but the NYT is hands-down the best paper in the world at taking advantage of modern web technology.

This shows, in almost painful detail, the bifurcation of the economy I was talking about earlier. Those of us who are college educated with a few years of experience could be excused for not knowing we are in a recession (4.3%). New graduates have it tougher (8.X%). Folks without high school diplomas are in total crisis.

(The highest unemployment rate, to the surprise of essentially no one: black men 15-24 with no degree. Its 8.5%... sorry, missed a digit, 48.5%.)

[+] bigsassy|16 years ago|reply
In my experience, it's not so much about being black as the environment you grow up in. There was an interesting study done by a professor of anthropology from University of California at Berkeley.

Shaker heights was full of affluent African Americans, and yet there was still a large acheivment gap between the black students and white students. The study concluded that the parents didn't involve themselves in their children's education as they figured living in an upper middle class society did the work for them. Meanwhile the kids held themselves back so they wouldn't be "acting white".

You can read about the study here, it's quite facinating:

http://www.racematters.org/whyareblackstudentslagging.htm

For what it's worth, I'm black and grew up an upper-middle-class household in a mostly white middle-class area. At 27 I've had no trouble finding a good job and in fact just recently turned down a high-paying job offer at a fortune 500 last month. Race has never been an issue for me, one way or the other.

[+] kalendae|16 years ago|reply
If you are a black man between 15-24 with no high school diploma, changing the color of your skin (to white) has more positive impact than getting that high school diploma.
[+] MikeCapone|16 years ago|reply
I'm surprised that the WSJ hasn't caught on and started doing more cool things with all its data.
[+] elblanco|16 years ago|reply
The curve for young black educated men was actually the most shocking for me. It doesn't follow the smooth, more predictable trending that most other groups show.
[+] dustingetz|16 years ago|reply
economics is pretty complicated, and correlation does not imply causation.
[+] araneae|16 years ago|reply
White female college graduates between 25 and 44 have the lowest unemployment rate of any demographic group.
[+] netcan|16 years ago|reply
I think that women are more likely to leave the workforce when it is difficult to get a job & enter it when it is particularly attractive. Extended maternity breaks, home makers etc. Leaving the workforce is leaving the graph, neither employed or unemployed.
[+] jlees|16 years ago|reply
As one of the above, I found this statistic oddly pleasing, since only one of the above factors was within my control.
[+] pbhjpbhj|16 years ago|reply
Do they count those on maternity leave or who work fulltime homemaking as being either not unemployed or employed at home? Sacking women at the lower end of this age range could lead to sexual discrimination suits - "she heard I was trying for a baby then I was sacked, ..." to avoid maternity payments?
[+] tybris|16 years ago|reply
Looks like in 1 year time (when I'm 25) I'll double my chances of getting a job.
[+] etherael|16 years ago|reply
I question the definition of "people like me".

If i could pick a few attributes about which I felt least influenced my character, race, age, education level would definitely be right up at the top.

[+] gaius|16 years ago|reply
You are not a precious and unique snowflake, and neither am I.
[+] jsean|16 years ago|reply
Then what has influenced your character? If I could pick a few attributes which I felt most influenced my character, race and education level might not be at the top but surely there amongst. Both directly and indirectly through how others perceive me and through how I perceive that others perceive me.
[+] vaksel|16 years ago|reply
you also need to take things like underemployement into the equation, the main reason there aren't any jobs for people without a college degree, is because people with college degree are taking jobs at 7-8 bucks an hour just to put food on the table
[+] rdtsc|16 years ago|reply
That is probably tied into immigration and welfare policies. An illegal worker from Mexico will pick potatoes for $4/hour, while a poor black person who is a US citizen will probably refuse the same job even at $8/hour (or whatever the minimum wage is these days). A black person will probably rely on welfare. An illegal worker does not have access to the same level of welfare.
[+] alain94040|16 years ago|reply
Another interesting factoid: if you select people 25-44 with college degree, you can improve your score by selecting women instead of men.

Who would have thought? Educated women are doing better than educated men? I like it.

[+] lallysingh|16 years ago|reply
Time to start hunting for a sugar mama :-)
[+] elblanco|16 years ago|reply
Tufte would be proud of this.
[+] EinhornIsFinkle|16 years ago|reply
Thats a pretty cool interface to present all that data.
[+] motters|16 years ago|reply
From my own observations, unemployment amongst software engineers seems to be high.
[+] mojaam|16 years ago|reply
Although this is depressing, it's also a good learning tool.
[+] _ck_|16 years ago|reply
Unless I am missing something, they contradicted themselves.

The graph shows that the recession IS affecting everyone in all the groups equally.

They are all a few percentage higher than last September, but the ratio is the same as last September.

Instead of doing this by age, gender, race and education they should have shown this by TYPE of job.

Then it would be very uneven.

They should do this kind of graph for health care coverage.

[+] rdtsc|16 years ago|reply
They should have also broken it down by the income level.

> They should do this kind of graph for health care coverage.

Some topics are not appropriate for public discourse as far as large media corporations are concerned. We are not supposed to discuss the number of bankruptcies / year due to health care costs, or how health insurance is linked to employment and since there is a high un-employment, there is probably a large number of un-insured individuals as well. And how on the first accident any one of those uninsured will probably blow through their life savings, credit card accounts and eventually declare bankruptcy.