Latest news with #ChandraChilders
Black America Web
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Black America Web
Black Women's Equal Pay Day Requires Equity in Policies
Source: Milko / Getty Black Women's Equal Pay Day 2025 takes place amid massive cuts and attacks on programs and policies aimed at closing the economic gap experienced by Black women and their families. Recent reports of Black women's high unemployment rates only further compound the challenges faced by Black women and their families. Each year, Black Women's Equal Pay Day marks the day in which Black women finally catch up to the earnings of white men from the year before. The day in which Black Women's Equal Pay Day is recognized varies each year, but the impact on Black women and their families remains the same. This year, Black women on average earned 66 cents as compared to non-Hispanic white men. In the South, that disparity is even more drastic. Like other commemorative days, Black Women's Equal Pay Day provides an opportunity to pause and reflect on the challenges and opportunities for addressing systemic economic disparities. As outlined by the National Black Worker Center, a combination of occupational segregation and historic discrimination rooted in slavery accounts for the extreme inequity experienced by Black women working in the South. Chandra Childers, a senior policy and economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, recently outlined the impact of Trump's cuts and public sector disinvestment on Black women. 'The public sector includes workers in federal, state, and local government that we all rely on to educate children across the region, care for sick and elderly family members, ensure food and water are safe to consume, provide public transportation and sanitation services, and ensure access to a wide range of other public services,' wrote Childers. 'The decline in public-sector job quality across the South disproportionately harms Black workers, especially Black women, their families, and communities.' It's estimated that over 40 years, Black women lose out on $1 million in earnings. Even if Black women were suddenly paid the same as their white male counterparts, it would take an estimated 200 years before Black women working full-time achieved true economic parity. Achieving equal pay for Black women demands policies and the political will to ensure enforcement over the long haul. Policy agendas like the Black Women Best Framework and the recently introduced Black Reproductive Justice Policy Agenda by In Our Own Voice provide a blueprint for improving economic and social conditions for Black women. 'Despite historic unemployment rates for Black workers being double the rate of White workers, Black women's persistent labor force participation is not merely admirable — it is a reflection of generational resilience in the face of enduring labor market injustice,' wrote Miriam Van Dyke, research manager at Kindred Futures. 'We must uplift Black women and allow them to thrive as they have continued to raise and sacrifice for the Black community and larger society.' SEE ALSO: Unemployment Rate Remained Stubbornly High For Black Women In June BLD PWR, SisterSong, GBEF Host Houston Juneteenth Event SEE ALSO Black Women's Equal Pay Day Requires Equity in Policies was originally published on
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Labor unions highlight uneven wage, job growth in SC
Chandra Childers of the Economic Policy Institute presents a study of South Carolina wages and job growth commissioned by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations Tuesday, March 25, 2025 at the labor unions' West Columbia headquarters. (Photo by Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette) When Jovon Graham started working as a cook at Waffle House in Orangeburg in 2023, he was making less than $12 an hour. That's less than $25,000 a year, assuming his manager scheduled him for full, 40-hour work weeks. He couldn't afford a car and had to walk to and from work, often with aching, blistered feet after a long shift. To make ends meet, he stayed with his sister and his grandmother. 'It was basically impossible to live on my own,' Graham said during a panel discussion Tuesday in front of some 70 labor union members gathered in West Columbia. Graham no longer works for Waffle House but was part of the push for unionization at the restaurant and still organizes for the Union of Southern Service Workers. While the Palmetto State has enjoyed robust employment growth since the COVID-19 pandemic, one in five South Carolina workers still earn less than $15 per hour, putting the number of low wage workers in the state above the national average and that of the South as a whole, according to a report commissioned by labor unions in the state. And of the top 10 fastest growing jobs over the next decade — such as home health workers and warehouse stock movers and fillers — less than half pay more than $20.30 per hour — the state's median wage. That's according to the analysis of federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, known as the AFL-CIO, in South Carolina. 'Employment in this state didn't drop, but the wages didn't match that,' said Kim Smith, state vice president of the conglomeration of 63 unions representing workers that include airline pilots, postal employees and paper and steel mill workers. AFL-CIO chapters across the country have previously published similar reports in a push to increase membership. Tuesday's report marks a first for South Carolina, the third least unionized state in the nation behind South Dakota and North Carolina. The state had 61,000 union members in 2024, according to the latest federal labor data. That's up from 49,000 in 2023. Union membership for the state was at its peak in 1991, when 5.2% of the workforce was unionized. The report prepared for the union group by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., based think tank, highlighted two of the state's largest industry sectors: tourism and auto manufacturing. One in 10 South Carolinians work in hospitality, the report said, citing statistics from the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism. 'In places like Myrtle Beach, tourism is the largest sector of the economy,' it read. 'Many of those who work in hospitality, however, don't make enough to live in these communities.' The median income for a hotel desk clerk is about $28,600 a year. But researchers estimated the cost of living in Myrtle Beach for a single adult with no children at more than $46,000. That compares to $45,000 in Greenville, $50,000 in Columbia and $55,000 in Charleston, according to the report. 'For those workers trying to support families, the economic strain is even greater,' the authors wrote. In the four years after the pandemic, hospitality workers' paychecks in 40 states, including South Carolina, increased by more than the national average and actually outpaced the rate of inflation, according to a separate Economic Policy Institute report. 'Mostly what you're seeing is the effect of a tighter labor market,' Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute told SC Daily Gazette affiliate Stateline last year. 'More competition, more scarcity of workers, means employers have to pay more regardless of what state you live in.' South Carolina hospitality wages jumped nearly 33%, while the sector with the highest wages, federal government, grew less than 11%. At the same time, that only amounts to about $477 a week for the average hospitality worker. And low-wage workers cannot count on a worker-friendly job market to boost pay indefinitely, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Hospitality workers' wages are rising faster than high earners' in most states 'We have working poor in this country,' Smith said. On the other end of the spectrum, the report said, automotive manufacturing jobs pay more — a median wage of $31 per hour — but those paychecks have not kept pace with inflation and have $175 less in weekly buying power than they did a decade earlier. 'This is a remarkable trend — that a fast-growing industry with many employers needing to rapidly staff new facilities would face so little pressure to raise pay,' the report's authors write. Finally, the report highlights the inequality of job growth across the state. Of the more than 174,000 new jobs added in South Carolina between January 2020 and December 2023, more than 77% were concentrated in just four metro areas: Charleston, Greenville, Myrtle Beach and Columbia. That means those living in rural areas must spend more time and money commuting for work. And public transit is rarely an option. Meanwhile, more than four in 10 South Carolinians live outside those top four metro areas that have collectively received more than 77% of all new jobs. In the five years after the pandemic, states with lower wages and a lower cost of living saw the biggest growth in jobs. South Carolina newly ranked eighth-highest, according to a Stateline analysis last May of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Meanwhile, high-wage, high-cost states such as California, New York and Massachusetts fell out of the top 10 to the very bottom in job creation, according to the analysis.
