Replacing Factories With Jails: Just 44% of Milwaukee’s Black Men in Workforce

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http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12647/replacing_factories_with_jails_just_44_of_milwaukees_black_males_in_workfor/

MILWAUKEE—Wisconsin’s economic problems are only deepening the political crisis for Gov. Scott Walker, already the target of a massive recall campaign that gathered 1.1 signatures from Wisconsinites.

Despite Walker’s pledge to preside over the creation of 250,000 jobs by 2015, Wisconsin has lost jobs for the past six months as the rest of the country has added them, and job losses have totaled more than 35,000 since he signed his highly controversial state budget last June.

But there is a more specific economic (and social) crisis facing Milwaukee: Just 44.7 percent of African-American males are still part of the workforce, reflecting the long-term decimation and relocation of the city’s industrial based and the lingering effects of the Great Recession.

Even for African-American males in their prime working years (25 to 54), only 52 percent were in the workforce. “That took me aback,” stated Marc Levine, author of the new study illuminating the appalling level of joblessness in the city’s black community.

[DCKit]

1. That's just plain wrong and manipulation of the real numbers.

If you count all those working in prison industry jobs at $0.75/hr, the numbers are much higher.