(womenstake) A report released recently by the Women of Color Policy Network at the New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service has found that the Obama Administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would have to create 1.7 million additional new jobs for Blacks and Latinos to effectively close the racial unemployment gap. Currently, the nationwide unemployment rate stands at 8.9 percent. However, for Blacks and Latinos, the number is far higher - 12.9 percent. The goal of the Recovery Act is to reduce the nationwide average to 6.5 percent, but its provisions would effectively only decrease the average for Blacks and Latinos to 10.7 percent. The report found that Black and Latino women will be hit especially hard by this racial gap. While white women will receive approximately 1,377,879 jobs through the Recovery Act, Black and Latina women will receive only 496,684, which is 70 percent less than their white counterparts. Moreover, Black and Latino women make up only 5.9 percent and 5.6 percent of those working in industries specifically targeted by the Recovery Act. Although there is much to applaud in ways in which the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act addresses the needs of women, these are troubling findings that deserve more attention.

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