During this election season, Donald Trump pointed to the dismal employment situation in many urban black communities. While the statistics he presented were faulty, he was basically right. Most deplorable, the share of all black men nationally without a job averaged almost 40 percent during 2000–14; and in many of the Atlantic Coast and old industrial Midwestern cities it was 50 percent or more. In growing Charlotte, it was still 35.5 percent, whereas the city's white and Latino rates were 15.5 and 9.7 percent, respectively. No wonder there's anger at a recent police killing there, as the city's prosperity is leaving the black community behind.
Less discussed, however, is the plight of recent black college graduates. New research highlights the difficulties they face. In one important study, Valerie Wilson and William Rodgers assessed the changing wage gap between black and white workers from 1979 through 2015. After two decades of modest decline, the racial gaps among both men and women increased after 2007, particularly for college graduates. Among college graduates with no more than 10 years of experience, the racial gap increased by 3.7 and 5.9 percent among men and women, respectively.
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