Photo by Glyn Lowe
The District’s unemployment rate has been trickling steadily downward for much of the past two years. But, according to the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, not everyone is enjoying the growth in job numbers.
In a report released yesterday, the organization says that while D.C. is making strides in reducing joblessness, people without post-secondary degrees are at the greatest risk of being left behind. While the citywide unemployment level for people with at least a bachelor’s degree was 3.4 percent at the end of 2012, people who have only a high school diploma or the equivalent endure a rate of 20.8 percent.
“Unemployment is going down for lots of groups, but not everyone,” says Ed Lazere, the Fiscal Policy Institute’s executive director. “For most groups it’s going down, but the bigger story is that it’s not going down very fast for people without post-secondary degrees.”
Overall, the District had an 8.4 percent unemployment rate in December 2012, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Breaking down the numbers further shows that an extremely high level of joblessness persists for the city’s black residents, who saw a 17.8 percent unemployment rate last year.
But Lazere says that his organizations findings are not unusual given the economic turmoil that has rocked the United States for the past several years. Even as the economy recovers, jobs lags behind and unemployment and poverty tend to remain high for longer than it takes to emerge from a recession.
The Fiscal Policy Institute’s report points out that unemployment is still very high for several other groups of residents. Younger workers, between the ages of 16 and 24, are experiencing a 11.8 percent unemployment rate, people looking for low-wage work have a rate of 15.7 percent, while single parents suffer a 23.5 percent jobless number. By comparison, people in high-wage professions only face a 3.3 percent unemployment rate.
Meanwhile, the federal money the District receives for assistance to low-income households is about to drop, including $30 million from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Enrollment in that program is time-limited, too, meaning that people who are about to fall off the rolls are even more pressed to find work.
Lazere argues that while the city government has been making progress on job programs, it isn’t focusing on all the right areas. “We don’t put that much money into training for residents,” he says. “There’s a decent amount of job matching.”
By that, he means that while the Department of Employment Services is capable of helping people create and submit résumés, it does not do enough by way of helping people get the needed skills to find good-paying work.
Lazere says that Mayor Vince Gray has shown a great deal of focus on job creation, including the One City, One Hire program, which matches companies doing business in the District with city residents looking for work. But he says the city could do more to help its unemployed people gain the skills that employers are searching for.
“The budget’s coming out pretty soon,” Lazere says. “I just think the report tells us we need to do more and I think the biggest message is going beyond the lowest level. Not just the soft job skills but the hard job skills. We need to get more people on the path to getting some kind of credential.”
