PHILADELPHIA -- On a brisk January morning Markus Mitchell arrives at his desk at 8:30, his phone ringing before he can even log in to his computer. An employee at the giant nonprofit where Mitchell works is locked out of the organization's network and needs the 24-year-old's help.Mitchell became
PHILADELPHIA — On a brisk January morning Markus Mitchell arrives at his desk at 8:30, his phone ringing before he can even log in to his computer. An employee at the giant nonprofit where Mitchell works is locked out of the organization’s network and needs the 24-year-old’s help.
But when Mitchell looks around his relatively low-income and heavily black neighborhood, he worries that the rising tide of a strong economy has not been equally good for everyone in his community. And when it comes to his own labor market gains, he’s working hard to make sure they do not prove fleeting.
“I know that the fact that I don’t have a degree puts me at a disadvantage, over my peers,” he said. “I’ve gained enough knowledge to go and do computer work for people myself, so if that’s what I had to do, I’d do it.” But tight labor markets alone cannot undo established structural barriers. Even now, the unemployment rate for black Americans is double that of whites — a figure that does not even take into account higher rates of incarceration for black men in particular. The median black worker still makes 78 cents to the median white worker’s $1 each week.
“It was waking up to go to a day care, that was actually a jail, that you could freely walk out of,” he said. “I knew computers, and people with skills in computers, were in demand. I knew it in my heart,” he said. But at the same time, “who is going to pick this kid up with no college degree, no experience?”
What happens to Mitchell and others like him has implications for the broader economy. Historically, the gains made during periods of low unemployment have proved transitory for black workers, who are among the last to benefit from a good economy and among the first to suffer in a downturn.
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