Less stimulus for minority firms

Quick repost of AP article referenced on "The Root".

STIMULUS WATCH: Less stimulus for minority firms

cryptological pioneers

Every now and then you find a Black site and you say what the heck; I didn't know they even had that. Here is one such site about the role of African American in the NSA.

http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/african_americans/index.shtml

I got a job

I now have a job so I guess I can remove the "unemployed" from the description of the blog. The job is with a computer consulting company doing support work for a large pharmaceutical company. One disappointing thing is that I am the only Black person and the only person on the team who did not grow up in India. There are no women on the team and few in the industry. The job pays a good amount of money, so I don't quite understand why the talent pool is so limited. I would think people would be busting down the door to do this kind of work.

I have a long commute so I get plenty of time to ponder the issues. Basically, I believe it boils down to backgound preparation and then job information and contacts. To do the job you need a computer background such as programming or business analysis. The Whites in the field typically have business knowledge and experience. They come from the business. While the Indians have studied computer since high school. There seems to be no capacity for business or education to develop people for these jobs in the US.

In terms of job information, I think the average person in the US is completely unaware of the computer systems that run large business and government institutions. Everything is invisible.

Job categories by race and gender

These graphs have some additional breakdowns of the categories. But the major trends are obvious. Educated professionals regardless of race, continue to do well. Asians have the highest percentage of professionals followed by Whites. Blacks and Hispanics, especially men, have a way below average number of professionals. The lack of professionals shows up in the high unemployment numbers during the current recession. Gender wise it also show the huge impact the recession is having on men.




The charts also show how Blacks and Hispanics are concentrated in service occupations which pay far less then professional occupations.




In the year-to-year delta graphs you can actually see the shrinking of manufacturing and constructions jobs.

Employment by Gender and Occupational Category

Here is a nice comparison of occupational where men work and women work. The following chart compares the occupations of men and women by race.





There are some notable features of the first chart. Women are almost nonexistent in the fields of farming, production and maintenance. Women dominate office support and sales occupations. Blacks are concentrated in transportation and material handling occupations while Hispanic men are prevalent in farming, construction and maintenance. Asian men are concentrated in the professional ranks. One can also see the large difference between Black and Hispanic men and White and Asian men in the management and professional category. Among women the differences are not so great.


The next chart shows differences by gender within th same race.



The chart show that the deficit of female workers in farming, production and maintenance is consistent across all races. Asians had the smallest difference between male and female occupations. Hispanics had the largest difference.




Managers and financial professionals still tend to be men but women are much more likely to be professionals and office workers. Men dominate construction, maintenance and repair and transportation and material handling occupations. Women have almost no presence in those categories.

Weekly Unemployment Claims Rise Slightly to 496,000 (SA)

Weekly seasonally adjusted unemployment claims rose 22,000 to 496,000 from the prior weeks figure of 474,000. The weekly claims figure has come down from a peak of 674,000 in March of 2009. It is approximately 200,000 higher than before the recession started. Weekly unemployment is a good indicator of the overall labor market in the US.



The second chart show the longer term trend with unemployment claims hovering around 300,000 during periods of expansion as compared to 500,000 currently.