In March, as the national unemployment rate remained at 9.7 percent for the third straight month, the rate for black men rose to 20.2 This month's edition of City Limits magazine presents a comprehensive investigation of the causes, consequences and political controversy of black make joblessness. In this web extra, we look at how black men and families are surviving the economic crisis.

Leaning up against the outside of a deli on Convent Avenue near 127th Street in Harlem in January, Carl Allen says, "A lot of people I know, they lost jobs.” And to make ends meet, he says, "A lot of people I know, they doing the wrong thing."

City Limits Magazine


May 2010:
The Black Depression

News Topics
The Economy
Housing and Development
Author
Jarrett Murphy
Jarrett Murphy
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The dramatic increase in black unemployment, especially among men, during the recession—and the longer-term problem of persistent black joblessness, involving people who have fallen out of the labor force altogether—raises the question: How are black families surviving?

Some are probably doing, as Allen calls it, “the wrong thing," meaning they have turned to crime. The economic downturn, which obviously affects more than the black community, may have triggered a recent spike in offenses: Several categories of major felony crime (murder, rape, felony assault and burglary) are up so far this year, although the big property crimes (robbery, grand larceny and auto theft) are down slightly. Drug arrests were up a modest 3 percent in 2009 over 2008. It's unknown, of course, how many of the perpetrators are unemployed black men. Maria Ortiz, director of training at the East Harlem employment agency STRIVE, says her young, mostly men-of-color clientele survive life without jobs through some combination of "jail, shelter, shuttling between relatives, selling drugs."

The social safety net helps many—but not as many as one might think. Only about two-thirds of unemployed New Yorkers receive unemployment insurance benefits. The city's unemployed population increased by 86 percent from December 2006 to December 2010, but its welfare caseload decreased by about 6 percent over the same period, so cash assistance can hardly be keeping up with need.

Food stamp usage, however, is up 50 percent over the same period. Nine of ten food pantries in the city reported an increase in first-time clients in 2009. The federal stimulus bill included hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for extended unemployment benefits and other safety net measures.

For many black men, families are often the safety net. Andrew Salmond, a college graduate, had a successful contracting business, but when customers stopped paying him it collapsed. He moved his wife and children in with relatives in Brooklyn. “It's temporary—six months max,” he says. George Jones, a trained cook whose own catering business suffered in the recession and who's had a hard time getting hired elsewhere because of a prison record, says he only recently applied for food stamps, having previously relied on an extensive support network. “I don't know how I did it,” he says.

The support network is different for everyone. "Family can be a downfall for someone of my caliber," says Edward Bennett, an ex-offender. "Siblings, they're used to knowing that you're the bad guy." He recently stopped sleeping on a relative's couch because she was pressing him for money. His support, instead, has come from two female friends.