Carpe Diem: USA’s Poor & Role Reversal

Good news, bad news on “America’s Role Reversal”: Working-class blacks make gains while white counterparts fall back. The loss & gain of manufacturing jobs in an Illinois county, we’re told, “points to key factor in the narrowing income gap.”

According to the WSJ piece, “That reversal of fortunes“ among those in the same economic tier was documented in a “landmark study published earlier this year by Harvard University researchers” focusing on economic mobility & incomes occurring between 2005 and 2019. In Illinois’ Madison County … renowned for its steel & manufacturing industries, but amongst the hardest hit regions as plant closings ravaged job opportunities -- the narrowing gap is particularly striking & illustrative: “… the income gap between the two groups shrank from around $15,000 in 2005 to around $7,000 in 2019. (Madison County, with a population of 263K, is 83% white & 10% black.)

How did this happen? For one thing, US Steel was the king of employers in Madison County … until cheap Chinese steel flooded the market circa 2008 and many of those top paying jobs were lost for good. Meanwhile, DOL stats show that manufacturing jobs of all kinds fell from 20K in 2001 to 10K in 2023. At least, the WSJ says, “The China Shock had a different effect on Black workers, who were less represented in manufacturing jobs to begin with & were able to benefit from the growing number of jobs in other sectors” per a 2022 paper by researchers & Rochester U economist Lisa Kahn. Education & health services jobs in Madison County increased 13% between 2001 & 2023 while leisure & hospitality jobs were up 22% over that same period. Then again, transportation & warehousing jobs grew a staggering 250% to more than 12K thanks to companies like Amazon & Hershey opening “cavernous” distribution centers. In short, it's suggested that Madison County blacks were primed to be more adaptable, saw the new opportunities, and had a carpe diem mentality.

Davd Soul