Janine Jackson interviewed the Joint Center’s Dedrick Asante-Muhammad and CEPR’s Algernon Austin about the Black economy for the September 6, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

CEPR (8/26/24)

Janine Jackson: Corporate economic news can be so abstract that it’s disinforming even when it’s true. The big idea is that there’s something called the “US economy” that can be doing well or poorly, which obscures the reality that we are differently situated, and good news for the stock market, say, may mean nothing, or worse, for me.

A people-centered press corps would spell out the meaning of economic indicators, not just in terms of their impact on different communities, but in relation to where we want to go, as a society that has yet to address deep, historical and structural harms.

A new report on the current state of the Black economy takes up these questions. We’ll hear from its co-authors: Dedrick Asante-Muhammad is president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and Algernon Austin is director of the Race and Economic Justice program at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. That conversation is coming up on today’s show.

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JJ: Corporate news media tend to report economic news like the weather. Yes, it affects different people differently, but the source, the economy, is just—stuff that happens.

But there’s really no such thing as “the economy.” There are policies and practices about taxes and lending and wages, and they are as historically embedded, preferentially enforced and as susceptible to intentional change as everything else.

So how should we read reports about the “best Black economy in decades,” particularly as one question news media rarely include in the daily recitation of numbers is: Compared to what?

A new research brief engages these questions; the title’s a bit of a giveaway: “The Best Black Economy in Generations—and Why It Isn’t Enough.”

We’re joined now by the brief’s co-authors. Dedrick Asante-Muhammad is president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and Algernon Austin is director of the Race and Economic Justice program at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Dedrick Asante-Muhammad and Algernon Austin.

Dedrick Asante-Muhammad: Thank you.

Algernon Austin:  It’s a pleasure to be with you.

JJ: Economic reporting can seem very dry and divorced from life as lived. We read that the country’s GDP is up, or that inflation is leveling off, and a lot of us just don’t know what that means, in terms of whether we are more likely to get a job, or a wage increase, or a home loan. If you can parse that data, though, it does tell us something, if not enough. So let me ask you first, what particular indicators are telling us or showing us that Black Americans are experiencing the most positive economic conditions in generations? What are you looking at?

Algernon Austin: “If you had an additional 1.4 million Black people working, you would…significantly reduce Black poverty, and would help Black households start to build wealth.”

AA: One thing that I pay a lot of attention to is the employment-to-population ratio, or the employment rate, and that’s simply what percent of the population is working. And that’s something that’s very concrete, that people can relate to. And the Black population, historically, has had a significantly lower employment rate than the white population.

So why we’re in the greatest economy on record is because, if you look at the prime age employment rate, that’s individuals 25-to-54 years old, the Black prime age employment rate, the annual rate for the first half of this year has been at a record high. So that is certainly quite positive news, and something that we should celebrate.

But as you pointed out, compared to what? Compared to the white prime age employment rate, it’s still below average. And when you do the full calculation of what I call the “Black jobs deficit,” we need about 1.4 million more Black people working to have the same employment rate as white people.

And what does that mean in terms of income for Black America? If you had an additional 1.4 million Black people working, you would have an additional $60 billion, that’s with a B, $60 billion going into Black America, which would significantly reduce Black poverty, and would help Black households start to build wealth.

So that’s the positive: We have a high employment rate. The negative is it’s still lagging, and that lag, that deficit, is still causing a great deal of poverty for Black people.

JJ: So Algernon, you’ve connected employment and poverty and income right there, which are the key indicators that I’m seeing lifted up in this report. Unemployment is one that is a complicated thing to report because, as we know, sometimes unemployment rates don’t include people who’ve stopped looking for work, and all of that. But you’re saying that unemployment and poverty and income are all connected here. What can you tell us about what those other indicators, the poverty rates, and the income and wealth indicators, what do they add to this picture about good news?

AA: We pay a lot of attention to the unemployment rate, which is valid; it’s an important indicator. But for populations that face persistent challenges finding work —and I just said that there are about 1.4 million Black people who should be working but who aren’t—you see the unemployment rate undercounts joblessness. Because if people have been repeatedly rejected by employers—so imagine someone who maybe was formerly incarcerated—that individual is less likely to be actively looking for work. And if you’re not actively looking for work, you’re not counted as being unemployed. Or if you’re in an economically depressed area and you look around and you say, “there’s no jobs,” and you’re not actively looking for work, you’re not being counted as unemployed.

So the unemployment rate is an important indicator, and the Black rate is typically about twice the white rate. Right now, it’s a little bit less than two times, so that’s, again, another positive sign. But it does undercount joblessness.

Dedrick Asante-Muhammad: Yeah. And in terms of income and wealth, we’ve also seen some positive signs. So I think that’s why we’re saying it’s the strongest Black economy in generations, because we see in many of the major indicators that Blacks are at record high. Also in terms of median household income, Blacks in 2022 were at $53,000 median income for households. And so that is a record high for the African-American community. As well as wealth in 2022, where we have the most recent data, it’s at a record high of $45,000.

Now, just as Algernon had noted, record highs can be great, but relative to what, and what does that mean? The median income for white households is $81,000. So Blacks are still about $30,000 less in terms of median income. And I think most people would understand that $53,000 for a household is not a lot of money.

And we look at wealth. We also argue that $45,000 median wealth is actually a household that is asset poor, that does not have enough wealth to keep them financially secure. There’s been estimates, well, let’s just put forward that white median wealth is $285,000. So you have that $45,000, compared to $285,000, with past estimates of middle-class wealth beginning around $170,000.

So we can see that we’re hitting record highs, but we’re still leaving African Americans in spaces of economic insecurity, and that’s why it isn’t enough and we need to do more.

New York Times (5/30/24)

JJ: There’s been a phenomenon lately where reporters and pundits seem to say, “People are saying they’re not happy with the economy, but they’re wrong, because look at this chart.” It’s sort of like people are maybe too dumb to know how good they have it.

But people aren’t dumb. They know they have two jobs and still struggle. They know they have a fairly good income, but they could not survive one medical emergency. But reporting, and some politicking, seems to suggest that if you aren’t doing well, then maybe that’s a you problem, because, after all, “the economy” is firing on all pistons. But people’s opinion about their economic health and their economic situation, Black people’s opinion, comes from a combination of things, you found?

AA: A lot of the reporting is based on macroeconomic indicators, which are, I’m not disputing them, it’s just that the big picture, national average can mask a lot of variation on the ground, and can be distant from what people are feeling.

So we’ve been through, because of Covid, because of the lockdowns, because of the shutdown and supply chains, because of the war in Ukraine, we’ve seen a massive spike in inflation, I think probably more than we’ve seen in a generation. And that has been quite a shock. And I think that affects people’s views of economic conditions.

We’ve also seen very high interest rates, and that makes it very hard for people to borrow, or increases the cost of trying to get a mortgage, increases credit card debt. We’ve seen, in terms of housing, a real scarcity in housing, and a real spike in housing costs.

So there’s a lot of things for people to be worried about, to be anxious about. And of course there was the Covid recession, which was massive. So there’s been a lot of economic turmoil, and it’s an error to discount what these recent traumatic experiences are, and the fact that they’re not just experiences, there are real economic consequences that people see every day when they go to the grocery store and pay their grocery bills.

JJ: And Dedrick, the report says Black Americans are optimistic, pessimistic, multifaceted and complex in terms of their understanding of their own economic situation, and then when they’re asked about the broader picture; and that makes sense as human beings.

Pew (7/18/23)

DA: Yeah, yeah. I did think that was an interesting thing pulled out of our paper, was looking at some past surveys and seeing 67% of African Americans expressed optimism, feeling good to somewhat good, about their financial future, while at the same time, in a different poll, in a Pew poll, we saw that African Americans, 70% said they did not have enough money for the life they want. And these are different things, right?

Again, if you’re used to ridiculously high unemployment rates in your community, and then it’s getting a little bit better, that might make you feel optimistic that, oh, well, maybe things can get better in my household. But, at the same time, you can still understand that, “but I don’t have enough money to be a homeowner. I’m having a harder and harder time paying grocery bills.”

So both of those feelings can live within one’s life experience and be real. I think it’s only when you’re trying to just have a very simple explanation of how people feel that we act like they’re in contradiction.

JJ: Algernon has referred a couple times to consistent challenges faced by Black Americans. I think that’s part of what’s left out of a lot of news media conversations. So let’s just talk about, when you say big numbers, macro numbers, can be trending in a good direction, but they’re not enough, and they’re not going to be enough without something else, what are you getting at? What would responsive policy look like?

CBPP (6/10/24)

AA: In response to the Covid pandemic, the federal government expanded the child tax credit, and expanded the earned income tax credit, so that more poor people and more poor people with children would get aid from the federal government.

And what did we see? We saw a dramatic decline in poverty, dramatic decline in Black poverty, dramatic decline in Black child poverty, as well as for American Indians, for Latinos, and for the white population. So we know what works, we know that we have the power to do it, but, unfortunately, conservatives in Congress decided that they were not going to extend the expanded child tax credit and the expanded EITC.

So we’ve seen a reversal. So we’ve seen Black poverty rates—and this is using the supplemental poverty measure, that factors in these tax credits—increase again. So it’s unfortunate that policy makers don’t put the policy agenda to fight poverty, and to produce more racial equality, as a higher priority.

DA: Yes, and I’ll just add to that, I think an important takeaway from this is that though we have some record highs, we don’t need to let up on the economy. We need to put our pedal down to the metal, as the saying goes, in order to continue to build and strengthen. Because even with these record highs, in terms of income, we noted a report that was done last year with the Institute for Policy Studies, that noted that even at the current rate, if you look from 1960 to 2020, it would take hundreds of years before Blacks had equal pay with whites, and it would take almost 800 years for Blacks to have equal wealth with whites.

And so over the last five years, we’re having some important advances. And so what we need to do is do policies that build off of that, right? Whether it’s to continue to strengthen the earned income tax credits and other such types of credit, I think increased home ownership, there’s a lot of conversation on that. We have to make sure any type of home-ownership advancement is something that disproportionately affects African Americans in particular, but Latinos as well. African Americans have never had the majority of their population as homeowners, and that’s the No. 1 source of wealth for most Americans. So if we can do something in 2025 to really strengthen homeownership for first-time homeowners, that could be something substantial that could help break away from these historic inequalities that have made racial inequality, not just something that occurs through prejudice, but something that can be seen through socioeconomic status.

AA: We also need targeted job creation. Subsidized employment is the most effective way, so subsidized employment programs targeted to high-unemployment communities. I mentioned that we still need about 1.4 million more Black people working for the Black employment rate to be the same as the white employment rate. So we need to target those high-unemployment communities with effective job creation.

CEPR (2/9/23)

JJ: When I hear “consistent challenges,” I mean, we’re talking about racism, in terms of economic policy in this country, and the harms have been targeted, historically and presently—redlining, loan denial, all of that, the harms have been targeted. But at this moment, supposedly reforms are not allowed to be targeted, because that would be DEI, that would be unfair.

And I know we’ve talked about, for example, the Covid response was not about race. Great Depression, the WPA was not targeted by race. It was actually something that helped Black people, because it helped everyone. But we’re in this present moment that we’re in, where if you say these people are being particularly harmed, and so at least some remedy should be targeted towards them, we know that that’s going to be politically difficult. And I know that’s a weird question, but I wonder what your thoughts are on that.

DA: Clearly, racial equality has always been politically difficult, as the history of this country has shown. So it will continue to be politically difficult. I think we have seen, like the War on Poverty, that sometimes in its name might not appear as something particularly focused on African Americans, but it was coming out of the strong Black civil rights movement of that time period, when we saw a substantial decline of Black poverty in particular, all poverty. But many of the policies I did think had a disproportionate impact on African Americans.

The most effective and efficient way to address disproportionate negative harm is to then put in positive economic impact, particularly on those communities. So we should look at ways of doing that. Sometimes race would be the factor named, but sometimes you can also get it just by focusing on first-time homeowners of certain income and wealth level that would disproportionately have a good amount of African Americans, Latinos, and would have some whites, but would have a disproportionate impact on the community.

So I think if policymakers are willing—and I think our job as the electorate is to make policymakers willing—and we can get forward these policies, whether we call them DEI policies, or whether we call them trying to ensure that America is majority homeowner, or America is fully employed throughout the nation, there are ways of putting this forward.

Vox (7/9/23)

AA: This is a long struggle. So if you look at the history of the Black civil rights movement, or Black liberation struggle, however you want to characterize it, there have been moments when we’ve moved forward, there have been moments when we’ve moved backwards. So this is just one phase. So it’s important for people to recognize: OK, what’s next? How do we move forward from this particular point? So I think it’s important to regroup and think about how we move forward.

I’m focused on affirmative action policies, and particularly affirmative action in employment, which still exists, which needs to be protected and fought for, because it will be under attack. The second point that Dedrick was making is that there are ways that may be less efficient for racial justice, but there are ways to make impacts that reduce racial inequality.

And we saw it, going back to poverty, the expansion of the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit had a disproportionate positive impact on reducing Black poverty. It also reduced white poverty, and poverty for all other groups, but because more Black people were poor and in hardship, it had a disproportionate benefit. So although that was a race-neutral program, it did have a disproportionate racial benefit.

And similarly, I’ve called for targeted subsidized employment, and notice I said targeted to high-unemployment communities. You can go to Appalachia and find majority white communities that are high unemployment, and we should be concerned about those high-unemployment white communities. But if you target job creation to high-unemployment communities, you will disproportionately benefit Black communities, because that’s where the high unemployment is disproportionately concentrated.

So I think it’s important that we continue on both fronts. Let’s exploit all the race-neutral policies that we can, but also let’s not give up on a race-conscious economic justice fight in addition.

JJ: I just want to ask you, finally, about news media, about reporting. When, Dedrick, we spoke in 2017, I was talking about a Washington Post piece that said that a rise in middle-class incomes was “unequivocally good news,” even as the same report had some sort of notes in between, one of which was, oh yeah, “yawning racial disparities remain.” And that’s kind of par for the course in news, the idea that racial gaps in economic circumstances and options are lamentable but normal, and kind of a footnote to the real story, which holds an implication that a rising economic tide will eventually lift all boats.

And that framing and that absence of complexity, while it’s kind of par for the course in corporate journalism, it reflects a misunderstanding and a misrepresentation of the way economic developments affect different groups, which is what we’ve been talking about. And I wonder, from both of you, if you have any thoughts about the role that journalism currently plays in illuminating this set of issues, and about the role that journalism maybe could play?

Dedrick Asante-Muhammad: “The future of the economy is based on how well minorities do in America.”

DA: Things have changed a lot over the last 30 years, even this idea of racial inequality, minority groups. I mean, now you look at Blacks and Latinos, and Latinos oftentimes, as well, have lower income levels, have lower home ownership levels, and you put these populations together, Blacks and Latino, and they’re about a third of the population. And if you talk about youth and children, you see that the majority of kids in many school districts throughout the country are students of color.

So no longer can it be kind of, well, there’s an issue with a small part of the population, but the rest of the economy is going strong. The future of the economy is based on how well minorities do in America—Latinos being the largest group now, African Americans being the second-largest group. So it will be essential, if we’re looking at how the economy can grow, making sure these communities are getting their share of the growth that would get them at a level of true middle class.

I think that’s one thing I particularly look at in terms of wealth, is that Black America’s never had a strong Black middle class in terms of wealth. You’ve always had a very small population that have had a middle-class economic wealth stability. And, again, the future of reporting on the future of the country really requires understanding those differences, and highlighting that, so we can push the country in the right direction, and how do we move the country forward in a way that is equitable in a manner that it never has been.

AA: I don’t want to appear to be too self-centered or self-serving, but we need the information presented in this report covered, because I feel both parts of the story have not gotten sufficient media attention. One is that we’re at historic highs on so many different measures that I don’t think has been talked about enough, and two, we still have significant inequality that we haven’t addressed. There’s some positive signs, but we obviously need to do a lot more. And like Dedrick said, we need to keep pressing the gas. We can’t take our foot off the pedal.

So that’s one thing. The other thing—I try to stress this when I speak to people—is that we’re talking about the United States, and Black people are part of the United States. Latinos are part of the United States. The American Indian or the Indigenous population are sort of part of the United States; some are independent nations, but they’re also interacting with the US economy.

If you improve the economic conditions of the Black population, you’re improving the economic standing of the United States. If you improve the economic condition of Latinos, you’re improving the economic strengths and health of the United States.

And it’s important that people understand that, because, unfortunately, people tend to go into a zero sum mode, and not recognize that helping Black people, in terms of public policy, is a way to help the entire country, help the United States. So that’s something that I think reporters can also work on communicating.

DA: The one thing I’ll add, in terms of what can reporters do, I think reporters need to focus in on expertise, Black expertise, expertise around racial inequality. I’ll just put forward, as recently new president of Joint Center for Political Economic Study, it’s important that Black institutions are utilized and are put at the forefront of conversations around the economy and these issues.

It’s great that there’s been more conversations around racial wealth divide, and race and economics; there’s been a lot of conversation around DEI—diversity, equity, inclusion—movement, and attacks on it. But I don’t feel that they have enough centered on those who have been at the forefront of highlighting these issues, putting forth policy solutions to address them.

There are a cadre of reporters who have been focused on these issues for the last 20 years, and these reporters need to be at the forefront of the conversation. Too often times, if I do get a call, I’m getting a call from someone who’s reporting this for the first time, and doesn’t even quite understand the reality that there is deep economic inequality, it has been ongoing, and it would take radical change to really get us to a place where we could have some equality. So, again, I think we need to value those who have been focused on this area, and those institutions from these communities, if we really want to report correctly on these challenges.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and with Algernon Austin, director of the Race and Economic Justice Program at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The brief we’ve been discussing can be found at both JointCenter.org and CEPR.net. Thank you both so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

DA: Thanks for having us.

AA: Thank you.

This post was originally published on FAIR.