Racial disparities persist in higher-paying jobs

Racial disparities persist in higher-paying jobs
Blacks & Hispanics lag behind whites for higher-paying jobs at the largest rates in about a decade as employment opportunities dwindled during the nation's economic woes and housing slump. Census data released Monday show an increasingly educated U.S. work force whose earnings didn't always seem to match up with its potential. "The lesson of most economic downturns is minorities are the last hired, first fired. They lose jobs more quickly, and they will be the last to recover," said Roderick Harrison, a demographer at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank that studies minority issues. Among those 25 & older last year, 86.6% graduated from high school, up from 85.7% the year before. It was the biggest increase since 1992, with record percentages of people earning diplomas across all racial & Hispanic categories. Share of people with at least a bachelor's degree from college also increased, from 28.7% to 29.4%, continuing a decades-long rise. Blacks overall slightly narrowed the gap in 2007 with whites in average salary, but the pay disparity widened for blacks with college degrees. Blacks who had a 4-year bachelor's degree earned $46,502, or about 78% of the salary for comparably educated whites. It was the biggest disparity between professional blacks and whites since the 77% rate in 2001, when the U.S. fell into a recession due to collapse of the tech bubble & the Sept. 11 terror attacks. College-educated blacks previously earned as much as 83% of the average salary of whites in 2005. Hispanics saw similar trends. Those with high school diplomas earned about 83¢ for whites' every dollar, largely unchanged from a decade ago. Hispanics with bachelor's degrees had an average salary of $44,696, amounting to roughly 75¢ for every dollar made by whites -- the lowest ratio in more than a decade -- after hitting a peak of 87 cents to every dollar in 2000. The numbers highlight some of the barriers for minorities, said Mark Mather, demographer for the Population Reference Bureau. He said the pay disparities can widen further since blacks and Hispanics tend to be relative latecomers to the professional world & thus more vulnerable to layoffs in the current recession. In 2008, a record number of workers filed federal job discrimination complaints, with allegations of race discrimination making up the greatest portion at more than 1/3 of the 95,000 total claims. "It's clear education alone is not the full reason for the pay gaps," said Sarah Crissey, a housing and economic statistician for the Census Bureau.
• For the second year in a row, the number of women with bachelor's degrees exceeded that of men. The share of women with the degrees -- 29% -- was also nearly equal to men. Still, women with at least a bachelor's degree earned an average salary of $43,127, about 60% the amount earned by comparably educated men.
• About 92% of white adults had at least a high school diploma, compared with 89% for Asians, 83% for blacks and 62% for Hispanics.
• Black adults in recent years narrowed the gap with white adults in earning high school diplomas, but the gap's generally widened for college degrees. About 33% of white adults had at least a bachelor's degree in 2008, compared to 20% for blacks & 13% for Hispanics.
• More than half, or 53%, of Asian adults had at least a bachelor's degree.
• Workers with a high-school degree earned an average of $31,286 in 2007, while those with a bachelor's degree earned an average of $57,181.
• Foreign-born U.S. residents, which include illegal immigrants, were 3x more likely than native-born to lack a high school diploma.

The census data came from the Current Population Survey as of April 2008. The figures for "white" refer to those who aren't of Hispanic ethnicity. Since the government considers "Hispanic" an ethnicity and not a race, people of Hispanic descent can be of any race.