African-American college graduates experience the highest unemployment rates and the highest levels of student loan debt

Joblessness widespread among young recent graduates of color

Young workers of color who graduated from high school and college in 2010 are experiencing disproportionately high joblessness, a new Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper finds. African-American, Asian-American and Hispanic recent graduates have been particularly hard-hit by the recession.

Graduate Employment Gap: Students of Color Losing Ground, by EPI researcher Algernon Austin, examines unemployment data for 16-to-24-year-olds who graduated from high school or college in 2010, and who are not currently enrolled in school. It also looks at employment-to-population ratios, or employment rates, because jobless young people are often not counted in the unemployment rate.

College graduates have fared better than high school graduates since the start of the recession. African-American college graduates have an unemployment rate of 15.4%, up from 8.4% at the beginning of the recession. Hispanic college graduates had an unemployment rate of 4.1% at the beginning of the recession and have one of 11.8% now.  The unemployment rate for white college graduates has grown from 4.0% to 7.9% since the recession began, and from 6.5% to 6.9% for Asian-American college graduates. 

Notably, unemployment rates have gone down for African-American, Hispanic and, particularly, Asian-American college graduates since the second half of 2009. The employment data, however, suggests much more widespread joblessness among Asian-American college graduates.

Finally, not only do African-American college graduates experience the highest unemployment rates of all of the racial groups, they also have the highest levels of student loan debt. In 2008, more than a quarter of African-American bachelor’s degree recipients had debt in the 75th percentile or more, which translates to $30,500 or more.

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