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AUSTIN (KXAN) – A new report from the Workforce Solutions Capital Area highlights the disproportionate impact of unemployment in Texas and Austin, which the group says has been made worse by the pandemic.
The report says that the latest available data for the Austin metropolitan area shows that unemployment among white neighbors was 3.4% in August, compared with 6% for black neighbors and 4.1% for Hispanic neighbors.
The group says their data also shows that 69% of people who have been unemployed in Travis County as of March 2020 have less than an associate degree – and those people are also disproportionately black or Hispanic.
“It sucks. It sucks, that’s all I can say about it,” says Reese Herd, a member and co-founder of the Black Austin Coalition, who says he’s not surprised at the report.
His wife lost her job during the pandemic, and Herd says it was difficult to keep the family of seven afloat on just his income.
“We had a daycare center, we had our children in sports, we had two cars …”
Herd says he knows many other black families who have tried to live on and / or no income.
Jameson Cardenas, spokesman for the Workforce Solutions Capital Area (WFS), says their unemployment report comes at a time when some areas in Austin were seeing job gains.
Reese Herd says he’s blessed to be in a high-demand industry, electroplating semiconductors. He says it kept his family afloat while his wife looked for a new job. (Courtesy photo by Reese Herd)
“We are also seeing that highly skilled workers in our region, in our most in-demand sectors, enjoy an abundance of job opportunities and financial gains also through COVID,” says Cardenas. “But not everyone in our community has experienced these benefits.”
Cardenas says WFS is about to launch its Hire Local Plan in January. The aim is “to improve the access of economically disadvantaged residents to better economic opportunities through qualification measures”, according to the weekly CEO report of the WFS.
Cardenas says they are currently trying to figure out how to best reach out to these residents and help them run the WFS programs.
“Whenever we track graduates of our programs, their income increases over time,” he says.
According to their program data from 2016 to 2018, the average annual wage increase for an adult who completes their employee training is $ 15,000 or more, which is an increase of about $ 7 an hour.
To date, WFS has held eight community engagement sessions for feedback. This included contributions from community groups such as the United Way for Greater Austin, Austin Hispanic Chamber, and IBM.
They say one suggestion for their Hire Local Plan was to open up the WFS services to their organizations by enabling shared registration and cross-referencing.
“We need more places and classes,” says Cardenas. “And we need to be smart to look into this and work with our training providers to make sure the capacity matches the growth we’re seeing in the community.”
Another suggestion is to join religious groups to fill the “awareness gap” and promote training opportunities for high-demand jobs.
“Lots of young people who are good candidates. they just don’t know what the options are, ”says Cardenas.
Participants in the engagement session also suggested involving more employers in the interview to help with job placement.
Cardenas says they also plan to expand resources that often hinder the low-income and colored people from attending training courses, such as free childcare and transportation, thanks to the millions of dollars in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act sponsored by the Austin City Council and Travis. District commissioners are granted at the beginning of the year.
Herd says this is all a good step in addressing inequality. His wife found another job about a month and a half ago, but he says certification programs are important – he has done many different ones himself.
“A whole series of different things that I was able to put under the belt that helped me get where I am now,” says Herd, who now works in the manufacturing process for semi-finished products. Conductors.
If you would like to contribute to the next Community Workforce Plan, click here.
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