Diversity suffers in workplace, thanks to poor economy
My colleague Steve Giegerich wrote a story that ran Sunday about the difficulty companies are having in maintaining a diverse workforce. Minorities — and particular female minorities — are losing their jobs at a faster pace than the workforce in general.
African-American workers have lost jobs at a rate 50 percent higher than white employees over the last two years, according to the study prepared by Howard Wall, a St. Louis Fed economist and vice president. Wall found the gap is even more profound when unemployment is broken down by gender:
Projecting the volume of jobs lost had recession not interrupted the trajectory of the economy, Wall determined that black women are now unemployed at a rate (10.8 percent) twice that of white women (5.4 percent).
Wall’s study determined that those percentages were significantly smaller among Hispanics. The unemployment rate among Hispanics has dropped by less than a percentage point over the last 23 months.
Not all companies are finding a loss in diversity among employees. Steve writes in his story, “A company that invests in the future of its employees by actively enlisting them in color- and gender-blind training and advancement programs is more likely to value that investment when decisions are made about who should stay and who should go during economic declines.”
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Kurt is the director of social media for the Post-Dispatch, where he has worked since August 2002. He's been a journalist since 1982, covering municipal government, courts, education and two hurricanes as a reporter before becoming an editor. 
Obviously time for a bailout.
Many people of color and millions of poor whites are suffering from Republican supported protectionism. Republicans have attempted to merge firms and enforce barriers to market entry. This takes the form of political opposition, unnecessary qualifications, criminal harassment of applicants, unnecessary credit qualifications and numerous other ploys that do not have anything to do with the core issue. Which is who has a right based upon merit to a job. Merit system hiring means one thing only and that is who can do the job the best. Since millions of traditional minorities can out perform Republicans they have developed this system to supposedly weed out the undesirables. Keeping the job market open in this type of environment means counteracting some firms representatives since they choose to employ such tactics. Remember such representatives are undermining their firms interests for their own political party which is a conflict of interest based upon insubordination, and thus is illegal.
Mike, is there any problem in our world that isn’t the fault of Republicans?
Don’t get me wrong. I despise Republicans as much as I do Democrats, but every problem in the world can’t be the fault of Republicans, can it?
Oh Mike, take a quick cruise around a democrat supporting union work site and tally the minorities. Or ask Kurt for a tour of the democrat supporting Post-Dispatch and check out the diversity. Then get back to your incoherent rants….
Why is it so necessary to make sure that the workforce in a company is diverse? The reason that minorities are losing their jobs at a higher rate is because they work in lower paying lower level jobs. These are the first ones to go. When a factory shuts down, there are many more labor positions than management positions. If the black people are filling many of the labor positions, then the numbers will go up for them. If there are 100 labor positions and 10 managment positions and the management is white, then the percentage of blacks losing their jobs will be higher. If the AA’s want to be in management, then get your highschool diploma and go to college. And don’t give me this, the schools are bad thing. If you work hard, you will pass your classes and graduate, the school is not holding you back, you are holding yourself back, or your community and family are holding you back. Want to go to college? There are billions of dollars out there for minorities that are not available to whites. Get your loans and your grants and work hard and graduate college, then you can be in management. Then you can still lose your job when the factory shuts down because they are being taxed out of business. Then you can go without a job because the new cap and trade system means companies won’t be hiring new people because they have to pay out of the nose for CO2 credits to be able to keep their businesses open.
On what do you base this statement? “The reason that minorities are losing their jobs at a higher rate is because they work in lower paying lower level jobs.”
And this statement? “If the black people are filling many of the labor positions, then the numbers will go up for them.”
And this statement? “There are billions of dollars out there for minorities that are not available to whites.”