Black job seekers face rougher road

By J. Patrick Coolican

Sunday, Dec. 13, 2009 | 2 a.m.

A year ago Obnel Alphonse, who has a shy and formal bearing, was laid off after three years as a lifeguard at Circus Circus.

Since then, he’s enrolled at the University of Phoenix, where he studies business management full time, and he’s applied for at least 30 jobs — bus boy, floor maintenance, nursing. Despite a few callbacks, he’s repeatedly come up empty.

Las Vegas feels closed off to him now.

“That’s how it is in Vegas, no matter how much experience you have, you’ve got to know somebody, especially in the casino business,” says Alphonse, who last week was standing in line at JobConnect, the state unemployment office where people get help finding work and sign up for unemployment benefits.

At this point, Alphonse, 25, will take anything.

“I like to be independent, and now I’m going back to my mom and dad’s house, and it’s really hard to concentrate and stay positive,” he says. “For some reason, it’s just been very, very hard for me, and for everyone, to find a job.”

But harder, maybe, for young black men like him.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.9 percent of black men 20 and older were unemployed nationally in November. For all blacks age 16 to 19, unemployment nationally approached a staggering 50 percent.

That contrasts with the overall national unemployment rate of 10 percent.

Although statewide figures on racial disparities aren’t available, economists here think unemployment is at least as high or higher among young black men given that Nevada’s unemployment is 3 percentage points higher than the rest of the country.

“There is decreasing employment of young African-American males. I mean men with no criminal record, and they could not find employment,” says S.S. Rogers, pastor of the Greater Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Las Vegas. “They are denied. For whatever reasons, we can’t figure that out.”

In fact, economists and sociologists have some ideas. The reasons are varied and complicated, but one stands out.

“There’s significant racism in the market,” UNLV labor economist Jeffrey Waddoups says. “Firms are reluctant to hire black workers.”

Waddoups cites studies in which researchers compare the job-hunting success of research subjects posing as job applicants.

Princeton sociologist Devah Pager, for instance, has shown that being a black applicant in many situations is equivalent to being a white applicant with a felony conviction.

Waddoups hypothesized that black unemployment could be even higher than expected here because Nevada is a service economy.

“It’s illegal for firms to discriminate on the basis of customer preference, but if firms feel like a white customer might prefer a white worker, they might hire white workers,” he says.

UNR economist Elliott Parker agrees with Waddoups about racism in the labor market, and points to a complicated phenomenon known as “statistical discrimination.”

Here’s how it works: Firms have trouble predicting the skill level and productivity of applicants.

Socioeconomic inequities mean that white applicants, on average, are more likely to have a better skill set and education than black applicants.

Firms wind up making the assumption — based on valid empirical data and not necessarily prejudice — that the average white applicant has a better education and skill set than the average black applicant.

This has a perverse, self-reinforcing effect, Elliott notes, as black applicants are denied positions that would help them gather new skills and experience.

Denied good positions, discouraged black applicants engage in unproductive behavior.

Elliott says they ask themselves a valid, rhetorical question: “Why should I gather skills when I’m still not going to get hired?”

And the cycle continues.

The phrase often used to describe the struggle of black workers is “Last in, first out” — last hired, first fired. They are the last to enjoy the fruits of recovery, and the first to experience the rot of recession.

This recession is apparently no different, as the nation’s socioeconomic disparities have become pronounced since the recession began, not just for blacks, but also Hispanics, whose unemployment rate has soared to 12.7 percent from the low single digits during the boom.

A key factor appears to be education, as this recession has mostly spared those with advanced education.

The unemployment rate for those with less than a high school diploma is 15 percent, whereas for those with a college degree it is less than 5 percent.

The nature of this recession has also helped determine who has suffered. Construction had been a steady source of jobs for young minority workers, and no industry has been hit harder, especially in Nevada, than construction, which comprised 11 percent of the workforce during the height of the boom, twice the national average.

At the Maryland Parkway JobConnect offices last week, seven construction jobs were posted.

Nevada construction employment is down more than 35 percent since the peak. Las Vegas has lost at least 30,000 construction jobs in two years; with the completion of CityCenter, that number will only rise.

For Alphonse, that means he’ll face more competition in his debilitating search.

“It makes you wanna go crazy,” he said. “It’s so frustrating. But I got to hang in there. All of us are going through it.”

He offers a final plea: “No matter where it is, no matter what kind of job it is, I just want a job.”