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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 13. Seeking Jobs Outside Agriculture - 8. The Size of the Negro Labor Force and Negro Employment
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Chapter 13. Seeking Jobs Outside Agriculture 299
her husband is without one. On the other hand, if the employment situa-
tion is discouraging, some of the workers, particularly if they have se-
cured public assistance, and quite especially if they are getting old, will
tend to withdraw permanently from the labor market. Nevertheless, let
us consider each of the two factors separately. It is certainly pertinent to
our problem to compare the extent to which Negroes and whites offer
their services on the labor market. It allows us to comprehend better the
data on Negro unemployment® which we shall discuss presently. We shall
also find that it takes away some of the basis for the popular belief in
‘^Negro laziness.”
The total number of both employed and unemfloyed workers (the so-
called ^Habor force^^^J has traditiomlly been much larger^ in frofortiofiy
among Negroes than among whites. This has been particularly true in the
case of women. But such a difference, although smaller, was formerly
clearly noticeable in regard to males as well. In part it has been due to the
fact that there has been a pronounced time-lag in the elimination of child
labor among Negroes. Too, Negroes have retired at a much later age
than have white workers. In 1930 over half of the Negro men 75 years of
age and over—as against less than one-third of the white men of the same
age—were still ^^in the labor market.” While white women used to leave
the labor market in great numbers after the age of about 25, there was no
very significant drop in the proportion of workers and job-seekers among
Negroes until they reached the age of about 65.^®
Gradually, however, an equalization has taken place in regard to most of
these differences. Yet child labor, at least until 1930, dropped more sharply
in the white than in the colored group.®® The proportion of workers among
old people, on the other hand, seems to have declined somewhat faster
among Negroes than among whites. There has been, for a long time, an
upward trend in the proportion of white women gainfully employed j
whereas the proportion for Negro women was stationary or declining.®^
This equalization seems to have become particularly pronounced during
the decade 1930-1940,®^ which probably was due to the introduction of
large-scale public relief, particularly old age assistance, assistance to depend-
ent children, and so on, which, in spite of all discrimination,® meant more
to the Negro than to the white group. In addition, it is probable that the
great unemployment among Negroes during the ^thirties was a contributory
factor, in that Negroes who had lost their jobs, more often than whites, were
‘ See Section 9 of this chapter.
^This designation was used in the 1940 Census ^ it includes workers on work relief
projects (W.P.A., N.Y.A., C.C.C., and so on). The concept “gainful worker” used in
earlier census reports was about the same, except in some minor details (see footnote 12 in
this chapter).
•.Sec Chapter is*
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