BLACK TEENS FALLING BEHIND IN OVERALL EXPANSION OF JOBS

Bloomberg News

Higher minimum wages and slower job growth in urban areas have kept U.S.
teenagers -- especially black youths -- from reaping the rewards of the
past year's rising economic tide.

U.S. companies added 3.2 million workers to their payrolls last year -- the
most job growth in three years -- and the unemployment rate nationwide fell
to a quarter-century low. Still, the unemployment rate for black teenagers
was higher in December than it was a year ago, and was more than triple the
rate for white teens.

``There hasn't really been a breakthrough that has caused the rate to come
into line with the national rate,'' said Wayne Vroman, a senior labor
economist at the Urban Institute, a non-profit Washington think tank.

Vroman and others point to job losses stemming from an increase in the
minimum wage, a concentration on adding highly skilled jobs to the
workforce and slow job growth in cities for the disparity.

In December, the unemployment rate for all U.S. workers rose a tenth of a
point, to 4.7 percent -- still close to the 24-year low of 4.6 percent
reached in November and down from 5.3 percent in December a year ago. For
all 16- to 19-year olds, the unemployment rate was 14.3 percent in
December, down from 16.8 percent December 1996, according to Labor
Department figures.

The jobless rate for black teenagers was 34.4 percent in December, up from
33.9 percent a year ago. That compares with an 11.2 percent unemployment
rate for white teenagers last month, which was down from 14.2 percent in
December 1996.

Black teen unemployment did show improvement for a time last year, falling
to 29.5 percent in October, before rising again. That was the lowest black
youth jobless rate since a string of five months from January through May
1990 -- just prior to the start of the last recession.

And many of those black teenagers who had jobs last year benefited from
higher pay.

Minimum-wage workers -- teens make up a third of this group -- experienced
a breakthrough of sorts at the end of 1996 when the government raised the
minimum wage by 50 cents to $4.75 an hour.

The increase was supposed to benefit low-wage workers without causing
significant job loss. Yet teen employment declined by 21,000 jobs during
the 11 months from Oct. 1, 1996, through Aug. 31, 1997, according to a
study by the Employment Policies Institute in Washington.

The wage increase hurt black teenagers in particular because of their
dependence on low-wage jobs, said Rebel Cole, chief economist at the
institute. In September 1997, the minimum wage was increased again to
$5.15.

``Among black teens, minimum-wage work is much more prevalent, (and) there
has not been much growth in the minimum wage workforce,'' in relation to
the overall job growth, Cole said.

The fast-food industry, which includes McDonald's Corp. and Diageo PLC's
Burger King Corp. and typically employs large numbers of teenagers, isn't
experiencing the same job growth as other sectors, Cole said.

``The growth has been in the high-tech and computer service sectors,''
which are not typical minimum-wage positions. ``In that sense, there's sort
of a job-skills mismatch,'' Cole said. ``So the (unemployment) numbers are
much more larger for (black teenagers).''

Just last week the Clinton administration pledged to train more computer
programmers and systems analysts to fill a reported job shortage of about
340,000 positions in these fields.

Even so, the food service industry hasn't put a freeze on hiring, said
Sharon Olson, president of Olson Communications, a marketing venture for
chain and independent restaurants.

``I think anybody in the industry will tell you they are looking for
workers,'' Olson said. ``The jobs are out there.''