For black workers, progress in the workplace but there is still a hill to climb

Looking at the state of Black employment in America tells a mixed story: Much progress has been made in the era of the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond, but there is still much more to be done.

In the nearly four years since the pandemic upended the U.S. economy, Black progress has been clear: an increase in income that has outpaced the gains of both whites and Latinos, and an unemployment rate that has fallen by more than a percentage. The point at which it was in January 2020 and a general sense that collective consciousness has risen regarding inequality in the workplace.

However, racial disparities in terms of earnings still exist. Black workers remain significantly underrepresented in some professions, especially high-tech, and efforts to address some of these issues have lost popularity amid criticism that they have gone too far and are ineffective.

However, there is a sense of optimism about real progress.

“This recovery has already gone beyond the limits of what policymakers thought was possible for Black workers,” said Jessica Fulton, interim president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that focuses on issues that matter to people and communities. Of color. “We were in a situation where people accepted that black unemployment was always going to be high and there was nothing they could do about it. So I think this is an opportunity to continue to push the boundaries of what is possible.”

When looking at the data, the numbers are encouraging.

The Black unemployment rate in January was 5.3%, up slightly from December but still near the all-time low of 4.8% recorded in April 2023. Black employment for the month totaled nearly 20.9 million people, up 6.3% from February 2020. , a month before the outbreak of the pandemic, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

From a wages point of view, the numbers are more encouraging. For Black workers, weekly pre-tax earnings as of the end of 2023 were up 24.8% since the first quarter of 2020. That's more than the 18.1% increase for white people and the 22.6% rise for Hispanics over the period. Among the groups measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only Asians, at 25.1%, saw larger wage gains.

However, the unemployment rate is lower among whites, by a wide margin at 3.4% in January.

“High unemployment among black workers is a solvable problem,” Fulton said. “There are challenges we need to address. We need to know how to address discrimination, and we need to know how to address unequal access to high-quality workforce development. We need to know how to address employment gaps.”

One of the areas where the biggest discrepancies exist for underrepresented groups is technology, where Blacks and others hold few positions, and even fewer are in management roles.

The situation is well documented. While Black people make up about 12% of the U.S. workforce, they hold just 8% of all tech jobs and just 3% of executive positions, according to a 2023 McKinsey & Company study.

There are several groups working to address this disparity, with varying levels of success.

Participants tell similar stories. Black workers are interested in technology and believe there are opportunities. Companies don't understand the real-world benefits of a diverse workplace. Opportunities are limited amid a backlash against diversity, equality and inclusion.

“Diversity isn't just a warm and fuzzy feeling,” said Autumn Nash, a software engineer at a major technology company in the Northwest, who asked to remain anonymous as the company's name. “The numbers have proven that you get a better return on investment.” No permission was given for this article.

Nash, who is Black, holds a prominent position in technology, having worked for more than a decade while climbing the corporate ladder and trying to help the people in her group succeed, too.

Along with her work responsibilities, she is involved in several organizations that seek to help others achieve success in technology. They include Rewriting the Code, a global network founded in 2017 that focuses on women, and MilSpouse Coders, which helps military spouses and where Nash serves as chair of the Board of Education.

Companies that build diversity the right way thrive, she said. And those that don't suffer on a tangible level in the form of inadequate products and databases that don't reflect real-world dynamics.

“The lack of diversity left the big, great tech companies stymied because they had premature products,” Nash said. “One of the best ways to fight data bias is diversity, which is diversity across all different backgrounds. If you look at the boards of most major AI companies, do you see diversity there?”

In fact, instances of racial bias are still a major problem, especially in the technology field.

About 24% of tech workers said they experienced racial discrimination at work in 2022, up from 18% the previous year, according to a Dice survey of the tech hiring market. While some companies have changed their corporate culture, many others are still lagging behind.

“There are some good stories,” said Sue Harnett, founder of Rewrite the Code. “Goldman Sachs and Bank of America are doing a great job of not just trying to recruit, but actually bringing them on board and transitioning them from being interns to full-time employees.”

Rewrite the Code partners with workers and companies to address diversity issues. Specifically, the organization focuses on female college students and follows them through the first six years or so of their career path.

On the negative side, Harnett still sees a lot of token measures that don't go far enough.

For example, she said some companies focus on historically black colleges and universities, which don't go far enough in being able to create a capable, diverse workforce.

“I feel embarrassed when I talk to a company and ask them about their diversity hiring strategy, and their answer is that they work with black undergraduate colleges,” she said. “That can be part of the strategy, but it shouldn't be the only strategy.”

But Harnett is sympathetic to how difficult the task is.

“The amount of money you have to spend to try to find that talent can be enormous, but I think there are solutions out there, so I'm personally optimistic,” she said. “I hope we can make more progress now. But it's the companies that will lead this.”

Sometimes the answers are found close to home.

Ali and Jamila Wright are co-owners of Brooklyn Tea, a small business based in the New York City area that has expanded to Atlanta and is looking for more growth opportunities.

Through their recruitment strategy, they focus almost solely on underrepresented groups that have a variety of hiring needs. For example, they hire actors between shows or other workers in other professions who have been laid off and need a bridge until they find other work.

“All of our employees are people of color,” Ali Wright said. “We have people of color, we have people who are binary or non-binary. And since we're diverse, it makes it easier to hire people who we know are systematically disadvantaged.”

Brooklyn Tea has benefited from a relatively thriving small business environment, especially for Black and Latino entrepreneurs.

Black-owned businesses as a share of Black households rose from 5% to 11% from 2019 to 2022, the fastest pace in 30 years, according to the Small Business Administration. The increase came as the number and dollar value of loans made to Black-owned businesses more than doubled and as the share of the SBA loan portfolio for minority-owned businesses jumped to more than 32% from 23% since 2020.

However, race remains a fragile dynamic in the United States, and there is always the potential for progress to be rolled back, especially given the increasingly hostile attitude toward DEI initiatives. Critics say this approach has led to misallocation of resources, especially in the wake of controversies at Ivy League schools.

“From 2020 through 2022, we all felt the most potential and hope, even in the midst of a pandemic,” Jamila Wright said. “We were receiving a lot of funding and cooperation just from corporate entities, and this attack on DEI has affected some companies, including ours.”

But the disagreements mainly led to a rethinking of how to achieve diversity, not a retreat from initiatives in general.

For example, a December Conference Board survey found that no human resources executives were planning to scale back diversity efforts. However, Jamila Wright said she is cautious about the future.

“I think history has taught us that nothing, when it comes to race in America, goes away quickly,” she said. “So we're just trying to figure out how to be smart in situations where we shouldn't be smart. This was something we had to become equipped to do.”

Correction: Autumn Nash is a software engineer at a major technology company in the Northwest. One of her company representatives got her name wrong.