Even African-Americans who study science, technology, engineering and math – majors that have been winners in the job market – have had a hard time finding work, said John Schmitt, a senior economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who co-authored that recent report, “A College Degree is No Guarantee.”
“We are looking at a group of people who did everything right,” Schmitt said in an interview. “They graduated high school like they were told. They went to college and graduated. They entered the labor market. But they are more likely to be unemployed than their white counterparts.”
The gap between whites and blacks has been fueled by many factors. Black college graduates don’t have strong networks, and they often don’t have the experience to navigate the corporate world and reach the people who hire. More important, according to Schmitt, young African-Americans can face a measure of discrimination when they try to get their foot in the door, sometimes losing job opportunities to white applicants.
Among recent black graduates ages 22 to 27, the jobless rate in 2013, the last year for which data are available, was 12.4 percent compared with 5.6 percent for whites. For black 22-year-olds just leaving college, 67.1 percent were underemployed, compared with 56.2 percent for all college graduates in that age group, Schmitt said.
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