Economy

Economy

Unemployment rates for African Americans by state in 2015 : The Economics Daily: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

In 2015, the unemployment rate for the United States averaged 5.3 percent. The rate for African Americans was 9.6 percent, but rates varied among the states. The lowest unemployment rates for African Americans were in Hawaii (4.1 percent), Alaska (4.6 percent), Nebraska (5.3 percent), and Colorado (5.9 percent). The highest unemployment rates for African Americans were in Iowa (14.8 percent), Minnesota (14.1 percent), and Nevada (13.5 percent).

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Putting Race Explicitly into the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)

The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was designed to correct market failures thirty years ago. The reimagining of CRA must address the remnants of twentieth-century market and government failures with twenty-first century solutions. Financial institutions and regulators must revisit the intent of the CRA, which states that regulators are “to assess an institution’s record of meeting the credit needs of its entire community [emphasis added], including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institution.” I proffer that the entire community includes racial and ethnic minorities, and the CRA should be expanded to address directly these underserved parts of the community.
In the news and among the public, recent discussions have focused on the income gap between the rich and the poor in the United States. Yet the deep and growing divide between American households in terms of wealth – the sum of assets, such as retirement savings or a house, minus debt – has received less attention, even as it is providing deeply disruptive and quite difficult to reverse. Accumulated wealth and diversified savings can be far more important than income for keeping household finances stable through volatile shifts in the economy.