Latest Youth Jobless and Out of School Figures Illustrate that Chronic and Concentrated Racial Inequalities Persist

As part of its continued efforts to provide research and data on issues around youth employment, Great Cities Institute has provided the Alternative Schools Network (ASN) with data for their new report titled, Out of School and Jobless: A Continuing Crisis for Youths in Chicago and Beyond. Similar to previous reports prepared by GCI, the data GCI provided for ASN includes tabulations of 2017 American Community Survey data for jobless and out of school by race/ethnicity and gender for 16 to 19 and 20 to 24 year olds for Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, and the U.S.. Additionally, GCI provided jobless and out of school 2013-2017 ACS tabulations of jobless and out of school figures by race/ethnicity for 16 to 19 and 20 to 24 year olds for four rural county groupings in central, western, and southern Illinois to capture updated data following up from GCI’s most recent state-wide report, Industrial Restructuring and the Continuing Impact on Youth Employment in Illinois. You can access the new data tables that GCI prepared for ASN here.

Key findings from the data provided for the ASN study include:

The jobless and out of school rate for 20 to 24 year old black males had decreased in recent years in Chicago, Cook County, and Illinois, but in 2017, increased back towards 2014 figures.

  • In 2014, the jobless and out of school rate for black 20 to 24 year old males was 45.7% in Chicago, 45.5% in Cook County, and 44.7% in Illinois. By 2016, these figured dropped to 36.6% in Chicago, 33.5% in Cook County, and 31.6% in Illinois.
  • The jobless and out of school rate drops from 2014 to 2016 amounted to rate reductions of 9.1 percentage points in Chicago, 12.0 in Cook County, and 13.1 in Illinois.
  • In 2017, jobless and out of school rates all increased from 2016 rates, with the Chicago rate increasing 8.6 percentage points to 45.2%, the Cook County rate increased 10.6 percentage points to 44.1%, and the Illinois rate increased 7.8 percentage points to 39.4%.

Black females jobless and out of school rate increased slightly in Chicago and much more in Cook County and Illinois from 2016 to 2017.

  • From 2016 to 2017, the jobless and out of school rate for black females in Chicago increased .7 percentage points from 29.5% to 30.2%, while in Cook County increased 7.6 percentage points from 23.7% to 31.3%, and in Illinois increased 6 percentage points from 22.1% to 28.1.
  • In the U.S., this figure was lower but increased slightly from 19.1% in 2016 to 19.7% in 2017.

After increasing slightly from 2014 to 2016 in Chicago, the out of school and jobless rate for 20 to 24 year old Latinos dropped back to its 2014 figure in 2017.

  • In 2014, the out of school and jobless rate for 20 to 24 year old Latinos in Chicago was 18.2%, which increased to 20.8% in 2015 and 21.2% in 2016. The 2017 rate decreased back to the 2014 level of 18.2%.
  • Comparatively, the rate in the U.S. fell slightly each year from 2014 to 2017, from 19.8% in 2014 to 17.1% in 2017.

The gap in the jobless and out of school rate for 20 to 24 year old males between white and Latino, and white and black are more extreme in Chicago than in Cook County, Illinois, and the U.S..

  • In Chicago, 45.2% of black 20 to 24 year old males were out of work and out of school compared to just 7.4% of white 20 to 24 year old males. This 37.7 percentage point gap between black and white males is slightly larger than the gap in Cook County (35.2 percentage points), larger than the gap in Illinois (27.7), and much larger than the gap in the U.S. (15.2).
  • In Chicago, 18.3% of Latino males were out of school and out of work, making the gap between jobless and out of school rates between Latino and white males 10.9 percentage points, larger compared to the gap in Cook County (6.9 percentage points), Illinois (1.4), and the U.S. (3.2).

For black 20 to 24 year olds males, Chicago still has a much larger jobless and out of school rate than the U.S., and Cook County and Illinois remain not much better.

  • Compared to Chicago’s jobless and out of school rate for black 20 to 24 year olds males of 45.2%, Cook County’s rate of 44.1%, and Illinois’s of 39.4% show that conditions in Illinois beyond Chicago are not much better.
  • The rates in Chicago, Cook County, and Illinois show a stark comparative disadvantage for black 20 to 24 year old males in these areas compared to the rate in the U.S. of 27.6%. While the rate is better in the U.S., it’s important to emphasize that this is still a disproportionately high and unacceptable percentage.

While black and white males have higher jobless and out of school rates than females, this is not true for Latinos and Latinas

  • In Chicago, 16 to 19 year old Latinas (6.6%) have higher jobless and out of school rates than Latinos (5.6%) and for 20 to 24 year olds, they are virtually the same, 18.2% for Latinas and 18.3% for Latinos. Comparatively, black 20 to 24 year old males have a 15 percentage point higher rate than black females and white males have a 3.3 percentage point higher rate than males.
  • 20 to 24 year old Latinas have jobless and out of school rates of 18.7% in Cook County, 15.0% in Illinois and 18.8% in the U.S., all higher rates in the respective areas than for Latinos which were 15.8% in Cook County, 13.6% in Illinois, and 15.6% in the U.S..

As we reflect on the slight improvement and worsening of some of these figures, and the stark inequality these figures show, we are reminded of the deeply engrained and structural nature of this issue that is the culmination of an eroding welfare-state and result of an economy that reflects systemic discrimination and is unsuccessful in providing work for all of those that seek it. As ongoing economic restructuring has ushered in an exclusive ‘new economy’ characterized by high-wage educationally-intensive service sector work on one end and low-wage work with limited prospects for upward mobility on the other, we see how young people of color and the neighborhoods they reside in are disproportionately lacking access to meaningful dignified work, if any at all.

We hope that these new figures continue to convey the urgency of addressing the crisis of chronic and concentrated joblessness among black and brown youth in Chicago, Cook County, and Illinois.  We continue to work with others in expanding opportunities for education and training, employment, and entrepreneurship.

Click here for links to previous Great Cities Institute reports on joblessness among young people.

Study: 45% Of Young Black Men In Chicago Out Of School, Out Of Work

Bill Healy/WBEZ

WBEZ Chicago highlights a new report released by Alternative Schools Network using data produced by UIC Great Cities Institute for out of school and out of work 16 to 24 year olds. The data shows 45% of black men in Chicago between the ages of 20 to 24 did not have a job and were not enrolled in school in 2017, about 9 percent higher than in 2016.

An increasing number of black young men in Chicago are out of work and out of school, according to a report being released on Friday.

The analysis of 2017 census data shows a whopping 45% of black men between the ages of 20 and 24 didn’t have a job and weren’t in school —  about 9 percentage points higher than in 2016. For younger black males ages 16 to 19, the out-of-work, out-of-school rate remained unchanged at 9%.

As it has for more than a decade, the Alternative Schools Network, an advocacy group for schools that re-enroll dropouts, commissioned the analysis, which was done by the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute.

Full Story from WBEZ Chicago

 

The data produced by GCI is available here:
Out of School and Out of Work 16 to 19 and 20 to 24 Year Olds in Chicago and Cook County in 2017

How Mayor-elect Lightfoot can address Chicago’s gun violence problem

(Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

A Chicago Tribune op-ed on how Chicago Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot can address violence in Chicago cites the UIC Great Cities Institute’s earlier report (and corresponding Chicago Reporter column from the report’s authors) on the changing nature of gangs in the city and the need for policies and policymakers to adjust.

I love this city and will forever be committed to working for its betterment, yet I would be kidding myself if I said it didn’t sometimes feel like a war zone for so many of our young people, living in communities devastated by economic disenfranchisement. A Chicago Reporter analysis of a new study on gangs and violence from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute argues “Chicago needs a change in anti-violence strategies” because distressed communities, not gangs, drive violence in the city.

While mayors and their administrations turn over — as they should, per the democratic process — we need and deserve a holistic investment in this type of work that will transcend elected officials. By establishing an office of gun violence prevention under the office of the mayor, we can protect the longevity and effectiveness of the office. The funding for such an office would support not only essential staff personnel but also community-based programs, focused on areas with the highest risk for gun violence, to implement scientifically proven intervention and prevention strategies.

Full Story from the Chicago Tribune »

150 years of Jewish Community Building in the City of Budapest

Social Work and Jewish Studies Scholar Zoltan Haberman from ELTE University in Budapest will share his research on  trauma, resilience and community building among the Jewish community in Budapest. This community always looked for new paths, was ready for change, but at the same time preserved tradition and the ancient heritage. Dr. Haberman depicts the struggles involved in building and sustaining the Jewish Theological Seminary, and how it has reinvented itself, survived, and progressed over the years. He will show how the community and the University itself as an institution of higher education were embedded into Hungarian society, and how both the community and the University were able to endure the terrible ravages of history. During its 150-year history, teaching was suspended for a significant period only once at the Jewish University of Budapest: in 1944.

Dr. Zoltan Haberman is a senior lecturer at ELTE University and Associate Professor and Chair at the Department of Social Science and Social Work  at the Jewish Theological Seminary-University of Jewish Studies, Budapest.

If the above RSVP form is not working, please email gcities@uic.edu to RSVP.

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Policies towards Violence in Chicago Need to Change

On April 11, 2019, The City of Chicago’s Office of the Inspector General Public Safety Section released a Review of the Chicago Police Department’s “Gang Database.”  On April 16, The Chicago Reporter published a piece by Professors John Hagedorn, Robert Aspholm, Teresa Córdova, Andrew Papachristos and Lance Williams in which they provide some of the highlights from their January 29, 2019 report on The Fracturing of Gangs and Violence in Chicago: A Research Based Reorientation of Violence Prevention and Intervention Policy.  Both reports provide fodder for why and how Chicago needs to think differently about its problems of violence.

A primary strategy for addressing violence by the Chicago’s Police Department (CPD) is maintaining what is referred to as a “gang data base.”  The list of problems with the systems of collecting, maintaining and using the database is very long. The review from the Inspector General’s Office provides irrefutable evidence that CPD’s “gang database” is replete with outdated information and inaccuracies, that it disproportionately targets black and brown men (91.3% of 134,242 arrest cards) and is replete with dehumanizing labels.  Once on the list, getting off is next to impossible, although being on the list can have “life altering impacts.” There are questions therefore, about the means of collecting the data; its use; and its impacts.

In the cover letter to the 159-page report, Deputy Inspector General, Joseph Lipari states,

The Review found that: 1) CPD lacks sufficient controls for generating, maintaining, and sharing gang-related data; 2) CPD gang information practices lack procedural fairness protections; 3) CPD gang designations raise significant data quality concerns; and 4) CPD practices and lack of transparency regarding its gang designations strain police-community relations.

The Deputy Inspector further states,

Consistent with many of the concerns raised to OIG by members of the public, our review concluded that CPD’s gang information systems present certain risks that, if left unaddressed, will continue to undermine public trust and confidence in the police and, because of the broad perception and the lived experience of many, that the current system causes significant collateral consequences for individuals and communities.

After an in-depth analysis, which included extensive interviews with a range of stakeholders, the Inspector General’s Office suggests a reconsideration of the effectiveness of CPD’s “gang designation practices” in stemming violence in the city.

Based on the insufficient controls, lack of procedural fairness protections, data quality concerns, and impact on police-community relations, CPD should undertake a holistic evaluation of the ongoing utility and impacts of continuing to collect gang designations.

The reliance on the gang database to tackle violence is largely based on outdated assumptions about the structure of gangs as well as the relationship between gangs and violence. Citing the primary conclusions of Hagedorn et. al. on the Fracturing of Gangs and Violence in Chicago, the Inspector General report notes that the hierarchical structures of gangs of the past have been replaced by horizontal and fractured cliques (p. 52). Violence is more often a result of personal affronts that turn into retaliation than a result of what is often referred to as “gang warfare.”  As Hagedorn et. al. state, “The nature of gang violence in Chicago has been changing, but policies and practices toward it have not.”

As the problem of violence in Chicago is addressed and as CPD responds to the Inspector General’s report, it is important to distinguish between “gang violence,” that may be related to drugs, violence unrelated to gang activity but committed by members of a gang, and violence unrelated to gang activity by individuals who have no affiliation with a gang.  Merely tweaking how data is collected for a revised gang data base, regardless of what it is called, still leaves the focus for violence prevention on mistaken assumptions about gang activity and neglects what Hagedorn et. al. argue should be the most important focus:  a new anti-violence policy that de-emphasizes gangs and instead emphasizes conflict resolution among youth in a context of significantly increased employment and neighborhood economic development.

UTC event: The 78: Chicago’s Next Great Neighborhood

WHAT: UTC April 18 Seminar Series presentation on “The 78: Chicago’s Next Great Neighborhood”

WHEN: Thursday April 18 from noon to 1 pm

WHERE: Great Cities Institute Conference Room, CUPPA Hall, 412 S. Peoria St., 4th Floor, Chicago

WHO: Featured speaker will be Mike Pfeffer, AIA, LEED AP, Vice President of Architecture at real estate development firm Related Midwest

LEARN MORE:  The 78 is an ambitious plan to transform the largest parcel of undeveloped land in downtown Chicago into the city’s 78th neighborhood.  When completed, this 62-acre, mixed-use neighborhood development near the South Loop and Chinatown, will include residential, retail and office properties, along with open space. Join us Thursday April 18 for the UTC Spring 2019 Seminar Series presentation, “The 78: Chicago’s Next Great Neighborhood.” Featured speaker will be Mike Pfeffer, AIA, LEED AP, Vice President of Architecture at real estate development firm Related Midwest. The presentation kicks off at noon and will be held in the Great Cities Institute Conference Room at CUPPA Hall. All are invited.  Pizza will be served.

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Chicago’s gangs have changed. Our violence intervention strategies should too.

Photo by Stacey Rupolo

The Chicago Reporter published a column from co-authors of a UIC Great Cities Institute report on the changing nature of gang violence in Chicago and the need for policies and policymakers to adjust. The authors, which include Teresa Córdova, director of the institute and professor of urban planning and policy, and John Hagedorn, a fellow at the institute and former UIC professor of criminology, law, and justice, call for violence reduction strategies that “reinvest in and rebuild communities, reduce joblessness and poverty, and increase opportunity for African-American youth.”

Chicago needs a change in anti-violence strategies. Gangs today are not so much the cause of violence as one of the effects of distressed communities. We need to switch our focus from targeting gangs criminally to a strategy of economic and social development in high-violence African-American neighborhoods with concentrated poverty. This was our conclusion at “The Fracturing of Gangs Conference” held last year at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute. The findings are available in a new report, The Fracturing of Gangs and Violence in Chicago: A Research-Based Reorientation of Violence Prevention and Intervention Policy.

Full Story from The Chicago Reporter

 

Living and Dying on the Factory Floor – Book Discussion and Signing

David Ranney’s vivid memoir describes his work experiences between 1976 and 1982 in the factories of southeast Chicago and northwest Indiana. The book opens with a detailed description of what it was like to live and work in one of the heaviest industrial concentrations in the world. The author takes the reader on a walk through the heart of the South Side of Chicago, observing the noise, heavy traffic, the 24-hour restaurants and bars, the rich diversity of people on the streets at all hours of the day and night, and the smell of the highly polluted air.

Factory life includes stints at a machine shop, a shortening factory, a railroad car factory, a structural steel shop, a box factory, a chemical plant, and a paper cup factory. Along the way there is a wildcat strike, an immigration raid, shop-floor actions protesting supervisor abuses, serious injuries, a failed effort to unionize, and a murder. Ranney’s emphasis is on race and class relations, working conditions, environmental issues, and broader social issues in the 1970s that impacted the shop floor.

Forty years later, the narrator returns to Chicago’s South Side to reveal what happened to the communities, buildings, and the companies that had inhabited them. Living and Dying on the Factory Floor concludes with discussions on the nature of work; racism, race, and class; the use of immigration policy for social control; and our ability to create a just society.

David Ranney is professor emeritus in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois Chicago. Ranney has also been a factory worker, a labor and community organizer, and an activist academic. He is the author of four books and more than a hundred journal articles, book chapters, and monographs on issues of employment, labor and community organizing, and U.S. trade policy. His two most recent books are Global Decisions, Local Collisions: Urban Life in the New World Order and New World Disorder: The Decline of U.S. Power. In addition to his writing, he gives lectures on economic policy and politics and also finds time to be an actor and director in a small community theatre.

If the above RSVP form is not working, please email gcities@uic.edu to RSVP.

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