Being Black in America in February means more than just celebrating Black History month, where we commemorate this time to think about the impact of inventions, civil rights, education reform, and social change made by African Americans, but there to also look at facts in 2012. Blacks in America take a sting sitting at 13.6% in unemployment, which makes it the most unemployed out of all racial groups.
According to CNN.com, jobless numbers give a big look at the big picture, although we have a national unemployment rate of 8.3% (January 2012, bls.gov), African Americans still lag in secure employment. So what’s the deal?
It’s been said that blacks have had the highest unemployment among any other ethnic group in the U.S., but what is missing from the job search components.
According to TheRoot.com, most blacks, especially college grads, lack some of the “important connections” that other racial groups may have in corporate America. Networking is essential to landing a new job or business contact, but for some reason, effective networking is not always utilized. Other racial groups, for example, the White racial group tend to have connections to executives and corporate heavy-hitters, that usually land their mentees or children jobs/internships after college. First-generation college grads tend to have issues with landing corporate jobs in this same manner, which means there must be a close to the gap in teaching this group how to establish a network. In the same site, it also talks about the lack of migration of blacks to cities where the prominent jobs are. African-Americans tend to flock to major metropolitan areas but are less likely to move to areas where they could land employment, in fear of losing family closeness or fearing solitude.
Another observation is that companies tend to digress from hiring diverse or minority populations when their own diversity goals have been accomplished. So is it about hiring talent or about color? Hmmmm…
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