Section 1 Short title; table of contents; findings
Short title— This Act may be cited as the “Jobs and Justice Act of 2018”.
Table of contents— The table of contents for this Act is as follows:
Findings— Congress finds the following:
Nearly 70 years have passed since the post-World War II economic recovery initiative known as the Marshall Plan spurred the fastest period of growth in European history. Industrial and agricultural production skyrocketed. The poverty and starvation of the immediate postwar years disappeared, and Western Europe embarked upon an unprecedented two decades of growth that saw standards of living increase dramatically.
Whitney M. Young, who served as executive director of the National Urban League from 1961 to 1971, first proposed a domestic Marshall Plan in 1964. Many elements of his plan, which called for $145 billion in spending over 10 years, were incorporated into President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty legislation.
In the 1990 edition of the State of Black America, National Urban League President John Jacob again called for an urban Marshall Plan.
In 2017, the National Urban League again called for an investment in America by introducing “The Main Street Marshall Plan: From Poverty to Shared Prosperity.” The plan calls for investment in physical infrastructure such as roads, bridges and buildings, and for human development, such as education, job training and health insurance.
African Americans were disproportionately battered by the Great Recession and have benefited least from the fragile economic recovery that has followed and continue to lag behind in employment, entrepreneurship, education and homeownership, across all educational levels.
While the United States economy has emerged from the depths of the Great Recession, employment outcomes remain challenging for African Americans.
The African American unemployment rate, at 6.9 percent, remains nearly twice the White unemployment rate of 3.6 percent, a situation which has been true for nearly as long as unemployment statistics have been recorded (since around the time of the Great Depression).
Unemployment remains particularly acute among African American youth between the ages of 16 and 19. As of March 2018, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the Black youth unemployment rate of those ages is 27.9 percent compared with 10.7 percent for White youth of this age. This dramatizes the tremendous employment challenges faced by African American youth who live in urban communities.
Although Census Data shows that Black-owned businesses are growing in number at a faster rate than for any other group, they have failed to realize their full economic potential.
According to the Kauffman Foundation’s calculations from the U.S. Census Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs, while the average size of mature, non-minority-owned businesses is $2,300,000 in annual revenue when they have been in business 11 to 15 years, the average size of minority-owned businesses is only $1,600,000 at the same age. Minorities own half as many businesses as non-minorities. The conclusion Kauffman draws: minority-owned businesses start smaller and stay smaller.
Studies show that lifetime earnings go up for American adults with each level of educational attainment.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), in 2014 the median earnings of young adults with a bachelor’s degree ($49,900) were 66 percent higher than the median earnings of young adult high school completers ($30,000). The median earnings of young adult high school completers were 20 percent higher than the median earnings of those without a high school credential ($25,000). Today, median lifetime earnings for those with a bachelor’s degree are $2,300,000 or 74 percent more than those with just a high school diploma.
Despite overall gains nationally, gaps in college enrollment and completion by race persist. In 2016, college enrollment for White students was 71 percent, which was a six percent increase from 2000. From 2000 to 2015, enrollment of Black students went from 30.5 percent to 34.9 percent, and enrollment of Latino students went from 21.7 percent to 36.6 percent. Nationally, over two-thirds of all Asian and White students complete college within six years compared to less than half of all Black and Latino students.
America’s public school population is majority minority and in 2044, the United States is expected to be a majority-minority nation where Whites will make up less than half of the population. Given this seismic shift in demographics, we must be more intentional about improving college readiness in our nation’s elementary and secondary schools and promoting access and success to post-secondary education for historically underrepresented students.
Homeownership is the primary means of building equity and passing on wealth from one generation to the next. This is especially true for African Americans, where over 90 percent of wealth is in their homes, according to the Center for Global Policy Solutions.
Yet, African-American homeowners were three times more likely to be steered into subprime products, even when they qualified for conventional mortgages, in the years leading up to the financial crisis. The foreclosure rate for these loans was 10 times greater than conventional mortgages. Consequently, while the African-American homeownership rate peaked in 2004 at 50 percent, it is currently only 41.2 percent and is projected to decrease to 40 percent by 2030. Reversing this trend is vital to American families, to communities, and to our national economy.
The United States needs a domestic Mainstream Marshall plan that will combat poverty, promote equality and eliminate racial disparities.