Toward Black Full Employment: A Subsidized Employment Proposal

From at least as early as the 1960s to today, the Black unemployment rate has been about twice the white unemployment rate.1 This stable unemployment rate disparity means that no intervention to achieve equal employment opportunities for Black Americans has had any significant success in the past 60 years.A large subsidized employment program could finally break this two-to-one, Black-to-white unemployment rate ratio. Subsidized employment programs use government funding to cover some or all of the wage costs for hiring employees. By substantially reducing the cost of employees to organizations, this policy increases the demand for workers. A subsidized employment program targeting job creation in communities suffering from persistently high rates of joblessness would improve employment prospects for everyone living in such communities, but it would disproportionately benefit Black people because Black communities tend to have high rates of joblessness.In recent years, a number of economists and economic policy organizations have put forth subsidized employment proposals.2 This report will discuss the potential of a federal subsidized employment program to reduce the high joblessness among Black Americans and sketch some design features that would make that program more effective at addressing Black joblessness