For African-Americans 'safe' middle class incomes with government jobs are ending

One of the ‘safer’ positions for employment in the African-American community, besides working for one of the ‘Big Three’ automobile manufacturers up until the Recession of 2007, was working in a governmental job.

In the wake of recess federal, state and local government agencies are paring down payrolls and eliminating positions, which have sustained one route to the African-American community middle class dreams for decades. 

Following the consolidation trend of the ‘Big Three’ before President Obama’s government bailout of General Motorsand Chrysler, since 2008, a whopping 375,000 government jobs have been eliminated, according to the Labor Department.

In Michigan, African-Americans have experienced unemployment rates either 20 percent or higher in virtually every quarter since early 2009; including holding on to a 2010 annual unemployment rate of 23.4 percent. 

In 2009, Seven General Motors plants closed in Michigan, including towns will high-to-medium African-American populations Ypsilanti, Pontiac and Flint. 

“One of the engines of the black middle class has been the auto sector,” says John Schmitt, an economist who studies the issue at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, to USA Today.

“In the late 1970s, one of every 50 African Americans in the U.S. was working in the auto sector. These jobs were the best jobs. Particularly for African Americans who had migrated from the South, these were the culmination of a long upward trajectory of economic mobility.“