6676: Head Of The Unemployed Class.

From The Chicago Sun-Times, figures show unemployment for Black college students is disproportionately higher than other groups. Gee, you mean all those diversity job fairs and Madison Avenue youth outreach programs aren’t working?

Unemployment for black college graduates at 7.2 percent, nearly twice as high as whites

By Francine Knowles

Unemployment among African-American college graduates is 7.2 percent, nearly twice as high as their white counterparts and significantly higher than among Hispanics and Asians with four-year degrees.

That’s according to U.S. Labor Department data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute that also showed the jobless rate among Hispanic and Asian college graduates also exceeds that of whites. The rate for Hispanic graduates was 5 percent. It was the same for Asian Americans. For whites it was 3.8 percent.

Several factors could account for the disparity, said Algernon Austin, director of the institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy.

“The black population is somewhat younger,” he said. “The situation of the last hired, first fired dynamic could be at play.”

The concentration of blacks in regions and cities with higher unemployment rates is also likely a factor, along with discrimination, he added.

Even in good economic times, “there are disparities among college grads by race at all educational levels,” he said. “The disparities are even greater among individuals who just have a high school diploma or equivalency and even greater among high school dropouts. It looks pretty clear that there’s discrimination in the labor market.”