Downturn hurts blacks, Hispanics more, analyst says.
Census data released Monday show an increasingly educated U.S. work force whose earnings didn't always seem to match up with its potential.
"The lesson of most economic downturns is minorities are the last hired, first fired. They lose jobs more quickly, and they will be the last to recover," said Roderick Harrison, a demographer at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank that studies minority issues.
Blacks overall slightly narrowed the gap in 2007 with whites in average salary, but the pay disparity widened for blacks with college degrees. Black workers with a four-year bachelor's degree earned $46,502, about 78 percent of the salary for comparably educated whites.
It was the biggest disparity between professional blacks and whites since the 77 percent rate in 2001, when the U.S. fell into a recession after the collapse of the tech bubble and the Sept. 11 attacks. College-educated blacks had previously earned as much as 83 percent of the average salary of whites in 2005.
Hispanics saw similar trends. Those with high school diplomas earned about 83 cents for whites' every dollar, largely unchanged from a decade ago. But Hispanics with bachelor's degrees had an average salary of $44,696, amounting to roughly 75 cents for every dollar made by whites with bachelor's degrees.
That was the lowest ratio in more than a decade after hitting a peak of 87 cents to every dollar in 2000.
