"My job sucks."
Everybody I know, black or white, has said this before. But if you're black, you're more likely to mean it and with good reason: a new study from U.C. Berkeley's Center for Labor Research and Education says more than half of black workers in the US have jobs that, well, suck.
Whether you like your job is irrelevant; the point of the study was to show that race matters when it comes to finding work with decent pay and benefits. 56.4 percent of black workers make $12.87 or less. Only Hispanics had a higher percentage, but it's a good bet those numbers are skewed by immigrants doing manual labor and other low-paying jobs.
At first glance, $12.87 an hour might not sound that bad, but think about it this way: that's less than $28 grand a year, or $514 per week. And that's before taxes. My rent would eat up almost half that.
And you think YOU got it hard.
There's more to this story, I'm sure, but the full report won't come out for a few weeks. I'll come back to it then.
About the Creator
- Keith T. Reed
- A journalist and media personality for more than a decade, Keith Reed's work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Black Enterprise, Ebony, Essence, Heart & Soul and Uptown magazines. He has launched personal finance blogs on BET.com and AOL Black Voices. He's analyzed the US economy for National Public Radio and PBS' The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. He is a member of the board of directors for the National Association of Black Journalists. Contact him at www.twitter.com/k_dot_re
1 comment:
I am stunned by these findings. $12.87 an hour? This isn't enough income to SUSTAIN a family of four let alone allow them to PROSPOR.
This should be a wake-up call to all of us. The only way to overcome this huge problem is through educating ourselves and our children. WE HAVE TO DO BETTER!
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