Unemployment

59%.  Fifty-nine percent.  Almost three out of five working-age, non-institutionalized, African American men in Milwaukee are unemployed.  The "non-institutionalized part is critical too.  Milwaukee does a real number on black men with prison records.

Incarceration aggravates the racial discrimination that African Americans already experience in the job market. A recent study that sent matched pairs of young black and white men to apply for entry-level job openings in Milwaukee found that having a criminal record had a greater adverse impact on black applicants than white applicants. Even more disturbing, white applicants with criminal records were more likely to receive callbacks from employers than blacks with no criminal history. See Devah Pager, The Mark of a Criminal Record, 108 AM. J. SOC. 937 (2003).

from: The social and moral cost of mass incarceration in African American communities. by Roberts, Dorothy E.
source: Stanford Law Review, April 1, 2024.
via: HighBeam™ Research
COPYRIGHT 2024 Stanford Law School

Another note cited in the above article suggests that unemployment rates would increase dramatically if the number of black male residents who are locked up were added to the official unemployment numbers.  And America thinks it has problems in Iraq?  Hell, we’ve doomed ourselves by our own bigotry and injustice.