Unequal Opportunity: Losing Ground on the Employment Front --- Losing Ground: In Latest Recession, Only Blacks Suffered Net Employment Loss --- Firms Added Whites, Asians And Hispanics Overall, But They Deny Any Bias --- Effects of Seniority, Location
The last recession seriously eroded equal opportunity for America's black workers.</br></br>Blacks were the only racial group to suffer a net job loss during the 1990-91 economic downturn, at the companies reporting to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Whites, Hispanics and Asians, meanwhile, gained thousands of jobs, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of EEOC records.</br></br>The computer-aided study shows that some of the nation's largest corporations shed black employees at the most disproportionate rate. At Dial Corp., for instance, blacks lost 43.6% of the jobs cut, even though they represented 26.3% of Dial's work force going into the recession. At W.R. Grace & Co., they held 32.2% of the jobs cut, while they accounted for 13.1% of the company's pre-recession payroll. At BankAmerica Corp. and ITT Corp., blacks lost jobs at more than twice the rate of their companies' overall work-force reductions.</br></br>Companies say the sudden demographic shift is a statistical fluke, the unintentional fallout of corporate cutbacks and reorganizations. But some civil-rights advocates argue that something more insidious is going on.</br></br>"This is subconscious, deep-seated racism," says George Fraser, who publishes directories of black professionals. "People don't even know these patterns and behaviors are being initiated until you begin to see the pieces of the puzzle together and look at the numbers."