Re: 'For Whites, Fewer Jobs': NYT Chart Divides and Deceives (fwd)

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

Non-working whites.  I think it will be a minor miracle if Paul Ryan is
able to "reform" medicare and social security.

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2016 21:41:15 -0800 (PST)
 >
 >  > From: [** utf-8 charset **] FAIR<http://www.fair.org/~fair>
 >  > Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2016 20:03:44 +0000
 >  > 
 >  > This New York Times chart misleads by not noting that the number of 
 >  > working-age whites fell while that age group grew for other ethnicities.
 >  > Eduardo Porter used his column (New York Times, 12/13/16) to point out that 
 >  > Donald Trump got support from many whites who felt that they were being left 
 >  > behind. While there is evidence to support this view, one item in the piece 
 >  > may have misled readers.
 >  > The column includes a table showing the change in employment since the start 
 >  > of the recession for white, African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians. While 
 >  > the latter three groups all had increases in employment of at least 2 
 >  > million, employment for whites fell by almost 1 million.
 >  > This can be misleading, since the main reason for the difference is that the 
 >  > number of working-age whites actually fell during this period, while the 
 >  > number of working-age people in these other groups rose. The Census Bureau 
 >  > reported that there were 125.2 million non-Hispanic whites between the ages 
 >  > of 18 and 64 in 2010. In 2015, this number was down to 122.9 million.
 >  > By contrast, the number of non-Hispanic African-Americans rose from 24.2 
 >  > million to 25.6 million. The number of Asian-Americans in this age band rose 
 >  > from 10.1 million to 11.8 million. There was a considerably larger rise in 
 >  > the number of Hispanics over this period.
 >  > In short, this was a period of weak employment growth, but workers from all 
 >  > demographic groups suffered. The numbers in this piece give a misleading 
 >  > picture in implying that white workers suffered disproportionately.
 >  > * * *
 >  > 
 >  > Despite accounting for less than 15 percent of the labor force, Hispanics 
 >  > got more than half of the net additional jobs. Blacks and Asians also gained 
 >  > millions more jobs than they lost. But whites, who account for 78 percent of 
 >  > the labor force, lost more than 700,000 net jobs over the nine years.
 >  > The racial and ethnic divide is starker among workers in their prime. Whites 
 >  > ages 25 to 54 lost some 6.5 million jobs more than they gained over the 
 >  > period. Hispanics in their prime, by contrast, gained some 3 million jobs 
 >  > net, Asians 1.5 million and blacks 1 million&#8230;.
 >  > This lopsided racial sorting of jobs is only one of the fault lines brought 
 >  > to the fore by the presidential election.
 >  > â??Eduardo Porter, &#8220;Where Were Trumpâ??s Votes? Where the Jobs Werenâ??
 >  > t&#8221; (New York Times, 12/13/16)
 >  > 
 >  > Economist Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy 
 >  > Research in Washington, DC. A version of this post originally appeared on 
 >  > CEPRâ??s blog Beat the Press (4/30/15).
 >  > You can send a message to the New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/~letters, or 
 >  > write to public editor Liz Spayd at http://www.nytimes.com/~public ;(Twitter:@NYTimes 
 >  > or @SpaydL). Please remember that respectful communication is the most 
 >  > effective.