By GREGORY N. HEIRES
The Great Recession disproportionately harmed public sector black workers—and especially black women.
Job losses and growing racial inequality in the public sector threaten the gains that minorities and women have made over decades through government employment.
“Public Sector Employment Inequality and the Great Recession,” a study by sociology professor Jennifer Laird of the University of Washington, examines the impact of the state and local government downsizing resulting from the Great Recession, which officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009. The study found that public sector black women were more likely to lose their jobs and leave the work force because of the government retrenchment.
Blacks were more likely than whites to lose their jobs because they are over-represented in the public sector. At the peak of the state budget cuts in 2010, 17 percent of black women were employed in the public sector, compared to 15 percent of white women, and 13 percent of black males had government jobs, compared to 12 percent of white men.
A Pathway to the Middle Class
The employment opportunities for blacks and women steadily grew in the decades following World War II. A series of executive orders and equal opportunity procedures opened up the door to public service to them.
Government service created a pathway to the middle class for millions of workers. Significantly, the jobs came with decent pay, health insurance, pensions and other benefits, and, often, union representation.
About one in five black adults work in the public sector. They are 30 percent more likely to have a government job than non-Latino whites and twice as likely as Latinos.
Blacks accounted for 27 percent of the new positions in federal government between 1960 and 1965 even though they made up only 10 percent of the country’s population. Women’s share of government jobs rose by 70 percent from 1964 to 1974.
Today, conservatives have been able to tap into the public’s resentment caused by the drop in pay and benefits in the private sector to promote their anti-tax and anti-government agenda. That agenda includes pension reductions, curbing the power of unions, downsizing and cuts in health-care and other benefits.
The Conservative Threat
If conservatives succeed in smashing public employee unions and further defunding public services, minorities and women may find their pathway to the middle class closed.
Historically, inequality between blacks and whites and between males and females has been lower in the public sector.
But the Great Recession has led to increase in employment inequality, as blacks and women in the public sector experienced higher post-recession job losses than other workers. The unemployment rate for black males returned to its pre-recession rate by 2013. But the prime-age unemployment rate for public sector black women remained 4.6 percent below that of 2008.
Stagnation in the pubic is driving down the jobs recovery, according to the the Brookings Institute. By September, the private sector had experienced 54 months of employment growth, adding 10.0 million jobs to the economy. Over the same period, government employment dropped by 500,000.
All told, the financial crash led to the loss of more than 700,000 government jobs as state and local governments adopted austere policies. A 2012 report by the Hamilton Project found that public sector employment was at its lowest point in four decades.
Unfortunately, with Republicans controlling so many state and local governments, it’s hard to be hopeful that a public sector rebound will come any time soon.
“The protective effect of working in the public sector decreased substantially for black workers—especially black women—after the Great Recession, while white workers were relatively insulated,” Laird says. She adds that, “without a course correction, further efforts to dismantle the public sector will most likely have a negative effect on the workers who have historically gained the most from public sector employment.”
