NY Post Editorial Board: Bidenomics and Blue-State Policies Hurt Black Workers

More terrible news for New York City: Black unemployment remains stubbornly high at 15.2%, per the latest data. Worse, one in five black New Yorkers is either out of work, involuntarily part-time or has given up the job search entirely. 

The trend is bad, too. Unemployment inched downward over the latter half of 2021 for whites, Asians and Hispanics in the city, but kept ticking up for blacks.

And the bad news is national. February’s jobs report showed that US black unemployment, at 6.9%, is significantly higher than the overall 4% rate. Some areas are as bad as New York: In late 2021, black unemployment in Washington, DC stood at 15.4% vs. 8.1% overall. In Illinois, it was 13.3% vs. 7.4%. In California, 12% vs 7.2%.

Part of the issue: Blacks tend to be overrepresented in “frontline” industries (i.e., where work has to be in-person), and their wages tend to be lower. So blue-state policies that punish retail businesses and keep kids at home are going to do blacks disproportionate harm. NYC, for example, faces a 400,000-plus job deficit post-pandemic, with some 82% of those in face-to-face industries. 

Another cause: Bidenomics, the big-spending, inflation-driving disaster of an economic policy that the White House has been all-in on since the inauguration. 

Need proof? Look at the pre-COVID economic boom: Black workers benefited more in the Trump years than under any recent Democratic or GOP president. The nationwide black unemployment rate fell below 6% for the first time since 1972. Black poverty fell below 20% for the first time since World War II. From 2017 to 2019, median household income for black families grew 15.4%, vs. 11.5% for white families.  

Political leaders — city, state, national — should take heed of the fact that historic economic gains for black Americans took place in the context of historic economic gains for all Americans. 

Median household income surged in the Trump economy almost 7% year on year in 2019 (the biggest annual increase on record). And job growth, as in actual jobs created, was strong. Seven million strong, to be precise. Add to that the lowest overall unemployment rate in almost half a century and big gains in middle-class family incomes. 

This suggests that Democrats’ preferred strategies to help the economically vulnerable — big tax hikes, bigger spending and a laser focus on issues that most voters don’t care about — don’t do much. An unambiguously pro-business platform, coupled with an aggressive approach on illegal immigration and global trade issues, is a better recipe. 

The pandemic erased all the gains black workers saw under Trump. Bidenomics is keeping them from even starting to recoup the losses. 

And none of this lines up with Democrats’ nonstop noise about “economic justice.”

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