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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 13. Seeking Jobs Outside Agriculture - 9. Negro and White Unemployment
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302 An American Dilemma
per cent did not even have any work relief assignments (Table 5). The
corresponding figures for white males (16 and ii per cent, respectively)
were significantly lower. There was a similar difference, although on a
somewhat lower level, between white and nonwhite females. When the
number of jobless female workers is related, not to the ‘‘labor force,” but
to all women, 14 years of age and over, one finds that the unemployment
rate was more than twice as high (7 per cent) for Negro as for white
women (3 per cent).®^
Conditions, however, are different in different areas. In the rural farm
areas of the South, where only few persons are registered as unemployed,
the rates were actually lower for Negroes than for whites. The nonfarm
areas of the South show conditions only slightly worse for Negroes than for
whites. It is mainly in the cities that unemployment is so much more wide-
spread among Negroes than among whites (Table 6). The difference was
usually quite large both in Northern and in Southern cities, but since the
North had a higher general level of unemployment. Northern Negroes,
of course, were even more adversely affected than were the Negroes in the
urban South. In Philadelphia, about one-third of the Negro males, not
counting those on work relief projects, were registered as unemployed j
in
New York and St. Louis the proportion was one-fifth. Negro female
workers, as well, showed high unemployment rates in several of the large
Northern cities.
Perhaps Negro migration is the cause of this situation. The Negro mi-
grant, as we have seen, prefers the large city. Whenever possible, he wants
to go North. It is possible that he could have had a better chance in
Southern villages and small cities. But, as explained before,® it is natural
that the Negro prefers to go where he can escape injustice and restric-
tions, which are usually particularly great in the small Southern community.
Young workers are suffering from unemployment much more than
others. In urban areas roughly one-third of the total labor force in the age
group 14 to 19 was without jobs. Nonwhite males (36 per cent) were some-
what above, and white females (29 per cent) were a little below the aver-
age j
but there was no substantial race differential except in certain indi-
vidual cities. The situation was better for middle-aged people, but more so
for white than for Negro workers. This finding from the 1940 Census is
corroborated by other studies.
The Health Survey data for urban male and female workers in 1935-36 . . .
and the information from the 1937 Unemployment Census . , , substantiate the
conclusion that the NegrO’-zvhite diference in unemployment risk is mainly a
problem of the Negroes inability to improve his chances on the labor market with
increased age and experience to the satne extent as the white worker. If age and
* See Chapter 8.
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