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University of Wisconsin–Madison
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty

Black Unemployment in the UK and US

Black people more likely to be jobless in Britain than US, research reveals, By Randeep Ramesh, April 12, 2012, The Guardian: “Black people in Britain are more likely to be unemployed than those in the United States, especially during recessions, with successive UK governments ‘failing to protect minority ethnic groups’, research reveals. A paper presented on Friday at the British Sociological Association’s annual conference in Leeds shows that in the last three recessions, unemployment among black British men was up to 19 percentage points higher than among those in America. Yaojun Li, professor of sociology at Manchester University, told the conference that in Britain black male unemployment reached 29% in the early 1980s recession, 36% in the early 1990s and 22% in 2011. Unemployment figures for black men in the US were 22%, 17% and 22%…”