As a result, African Americans have turned to the service sector -- spanning such professions as data processing and advertising and lower-level jobs such as housekeeping -- like much of the rest of the workforce, only more so. The number of African Americans working in the service sector has nearly doubled in the past 20 years and now makes up about 43 percent of the black workforce, a percentage larger than for the economy as a whole.
But many of those jobs have been characterized in recent years by anemic wage growth and eroding benefits. On a percentage basis, far fewer blacks than whites are covered by employer-sponsored health care -- 52 percent compared with 71 percent -- and less than 40 percent of blacks are covered by private pension plans, compared with more than 46 percent for whites.
Carla Harris, chief executive of HeavenSent Consultants Inc., left, talks with operations manager Kayasa Cobb in their Miami office. Cobb, who has a master's degree, briefly considered taking on a second job to help make ends meet.
(David Adame For The Washington Post)
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About This Series
This is the fifth in a series of occasional articles about changes in the middle of the U.S. workforce -- the disappearance of many jobs that pay near the national average of $17 an hour, with such benefits as health care and pensions. Previous articles addressed topics such as the growth in itinerant workers and the tough decisions faced by businesses trying to preserve jobs. The next article will look at the prospects for jobs to take the place of those lost.
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_____Live Discussion_____
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Transcript: Post reporter Alec Klein was online to discuss this article.
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The Gap Remains: African Americans have made economic strides in the past few decades, but still lag in income and experience higher unemployment.
_____Post Series - $17 An Hour_____
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A Rough Ride for Schwinn Bicycle (The Washington Post, Dec 3, 2004)
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Slowdown Forces Many to Wander for Work (The Washington Post, Nov 9, 2004)
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Permanent Job Proves An Elusive Dream (The Washington Post, Oct 11, 2004)
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As Income Gap Widens, Uncertainty Spreads (The Washington Post, Sep 20, 2004)
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The lack of benefits is also partly due to the fact that blacks have been opening their own businesses in record numbers, and many of those small enterprises don't offer health insurance and pensions. The number of black-owned businesses jumped 33 percent to 823,499 in 1997 from 621,000 in 1992, according to the latest census figures. Black businesses still make up only about 4 percent of the national total, but their growth rate was more than four times the increase for all U.S. firms over that period.
Encouraging as a sign of entrepreneurship, that trend has also presented some hard truths about what it takes to get by, as Cobb testifies.
Trapped in a Trend
Cobb's career has followed a common path. As a college graduate, she can be fairly well assured of staying employed: The unemployment rate for those with a bachelor's degree or greater in the United States is 2.5 percent, far below the national average.
Service jobs such as Cobb's now make up about 80 percent of the employment in Miami-Dade County and increased 59 percent since 1990. She also reflects the county's growing black population, which has increased by 23 percent since 1990. That includes her boss, Carla Harris, who moved from Washington to Miami, where she opened HeavenSent.
For much of the past decade, Cobb could feel the momentum of those trends in her own life, as she earned pay raises and promotions.
But every day, Cobb says, she is reminded of her family's economic strains on the way home from work. Listening to Christian radio, she picks up her infant daughter from day care, then her husband from the library, then her 8-year-old son from her mother's house.
All the while, in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-95 North, the conversation revolves around how they can make their lives better: How can they cut costs? Should her husband go to community college? Where can they afford to live? At home, the conversation continues as her husband cooks a late dinner, while she uses the heel of her infant's white shoe to stamp out a trail of ants crawling on an empty kitchen cabinet.
Things could be worse. Just outside her apartment, they are. In her concrete complex, she says the night is sometimes punctuated by the echo of gunshot, or the crash of a neighbor's door knocked down by police.
"I don't even let my son play outside," she says.
She feels trapped, too.
Earlier this year, Cobb applied for a local government grant to help buy a home in a safer neighborhood. She was denied, she says, because her family made too much money.
"Sometimes, I wonder," Cobb says. "Is my life normal?"
