GRAMBLING, La. – On a day in mid-October when the employment rate for African-American men is at 59.9 percent, a 43-year-old man named Keith Kelly is walking alongside a road in the rain.
It is 3 in the morning. His clothes are wet. His destination is the only place he can find work these days, a day-labor agency that pays $6 an hour.
It is six miles away, but he has done the walk enough times to know that a steady pace means he’ll be there by 4:45 a.m., which will put him toward the front of the line when the contractors come at 6, unless the rain keeps them from coming at all.
On the same day, as dozens of job recruiters arrive at Grambling State University for its annual career fair, a 21-year-old senior named Darren Carter is reviewing the lessons he has been learning in preparation for this very moment, which he considers the official start of his search for a job.
Nothing fancy, he reminds himself nervously. Grip firm. Eye contact steady. He approaches a recruiter from Wal-Mart and extends his hand.
Two versions of 59.9: That’s what these men are. One works. One hopes to. Both want to be part of a number that in the current economy is one of the starkest of all.
In one version, a man filled with the hope of a 43-year-old keeps walking despite the rain. “I know I’m going to get picked,” he says.
In the other, a man filled with the hope of a 21-year-old introduces himself. “Darren Carter,” he says.
‘‘Hi,” says the recruiter. “Everything going good?”
The search for a job is now officially five seconds old.
“So far,” Carter says.
The employment rate is the percentage of people in a specific population who work. Unlike the unemployment rate, which is one of many measures of people who aren’t in the labor force, the employment rate is a pure reflection of how many people have jobs, which is why economists prefer to use it when looking at how much demand there is for a particular type of worker.
The starkness of 59.9, which comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ September report, isn’t necessarily apparent in the number itself–such a rate means six out of 10 people are working–but in comparison to similar populations.
Darren Carter attends an information session by the Philip Morris cigarette people in advance of the career fair. It’s at Grambling, one of the nation’s 105 historically black colleges and universities, located on Main Street in a town of 4,700 people, 97 percent of whom are black.
“We’re recruiting people for a tough job,” says Erick Harris, 32, a Grambling graduate who has turned a job selling cigarettes into a new home in one of Chicago’s better suburbs. “The big question: Do
