Wage growth among African-American workers has taken a double hit since 1979 due to the growing black-white wage gap and overall wage stagnation, according to a new paper from the Economic Policy Institute.
The left-leaning think tank finds that median hourly wages for black workers “could be 87 percent higher in the absence of racial and class inequality.”
Researchers examined the 1979 to 2015 time period, during which “overall median wages did not track productivity growth and racial wage gaps did not close, but instead widened.”
“This kept wage growth for black workers much, much lower than it would have been otherwise,” the report adds.
New research from the Economic Policy Institute shows that African-American workers earn less than their white counterparts regardless of educational attainment. Progress Illinois looks at the report and gets reaction from the Chicago Urban League.
Racial wage gaps are wider today than in 1979 due largely to discrimination and growing income inequality, according to new research from the Economic Policy Institute.
The average wage gap between black and white workers was 18.1 percent in 1979, with the gap widening to 26.7 percent in 2015, the left-leaning think tank reports.
Rutgers University economist William M. Rodgers III co-authored the report with Valerie Wilson, director of EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy.
“We’ve found that racial wage gaps are growing primarily due to discrimination — and other unmeasured and unobserved characteristics– along with rising inequality in general,” Rodgers said.
Poverty fell and median household income grew last year in Illinois, according to new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. While experts were encouraged by the improvement, they cautioned that things are far from rosy in the Prairie State.
Education activists from Chicago and other U.S. cities will rally outside the first 2016 presidential debate later this month in Hempstead, New York in hopes that the candidates will embrace their seven-point public education policy agenda.
For a third quarter in a row, Illinois had the worst African-American unemployment rate in the nation, according to a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
Racial wage gaps are wider today than in 1979 due largely to discrimination and growing income inequality, according to 
