Rising job opportunities for African Americans: NPR

Brittany Smith grew up mainly in Detroit, where she earned a master's degree in public health from the University of Michigan. But when she and her boyfriend then, Sam, started their career, they ran into roadblocks. That was in 2013, and Detroit was still struggling against the effects of the Great Recession. Sam Smith could not find a full-time job. His work as a University Career Advisor ended when the campus where he worked was closed.

They started looking for an exit.

"We were looking for growing cities for young professionals, and Charlotte has always been among the top five," said Smith, 32.

They traveled to Charlotte, northern Mexico, where the couple was successful. Two years ago, they bought a custom built house. They had a daughter, Erelah, who is now 15 months old. Smith has just started a new job at the head of a nearby team in a health insurance company. She has abandoned what she calls a dream job in another health care business because it pays better and is more difficult. And Sam found work as a college career advisor.

"Even though I love Detroit … I was looking for a change and more opportunities," Smith says. "And we have received some very good ones here in Charlotte."

The Smiths are part of an influx of African-Americans in Mecklenburg County, where is Charlotte. The African-American population has exploded by 64% since 2000. Some people come from neighboring counties of North and South Carolina, but thousands more come from Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania , New Jersey and Illinois, according to Chuck McShane, vice president of business. analysis at the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance.

The recovery from the Great Recession has, in some respects, led to a very small reversal of the great migration.

Other southern cities also attract a large number of new African-American newcomers, including Houston; Atlanta; Tallahassee, Florida .; and Columbia, S.C., according to David Harshbarger of the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program.

During the twentieth century, millions of African Americans left the South to escape racial discrimination, oppression and lack of opportunity, according to a demographer Jessica Barron from the Frontline Solutions consulting company in Durham, NC. They then went to industrial cities such as Chicago, Detroit and New York.

"The opportunities for blacks – the South and who have never been in the same sentence," Barron said.

"That's why we had the Harlem Renaissance blues and Chicago.They are all part of the history of the first major migration," Barron said.

But now, there are new job opportunities in the south. Over the years, while the manufacturing industry has been out of breath in the Rust Belt, the service, technology and financial industries have developed in southern cities. Some African-Americans have begun to return to the south of the country, an initiative that doubles with abundant employment opportunities and more affordable housing.

Barron says that migrants tend to come up with higher education and a wider network of connections as African Americans who have stayed in places such as North Carolina for generations. Smith, for example, found his job through commercial contact.

African-Americans with upward mobility benefit from an employment market that is the best of all time for two years. The unemployment rate for African Americans is 6.7% and was even lower last year, the lowest rate since the US government began tracking this measure in the 1970s.

Despite what appears to be a period of prosperity for African Americans, gaps remain. The low unemployment rate of blacks remains more than double that of white Americans. And in Charlotte, which has had eight years of job growth, the benefits are also uneven.

"The rising tide here did not raise all the boats in the same way," says Tom Hanchett, historian of Charlotte, author of Sorting of the new southern city and former historian of the New South Levine Museum in Charlotte.

He added that decades of segregation and downsizing had given African Americans living in the city fewer opportunities to buy a home and create wealth. Well-off newcomers put upward pressure on housing prices. And African-Americans living in the city center are marginalized, while the millennials with higher incomes choose to live in the same neighborhoods.

"It's happening in every US city and it's happening very quickly," Hanchett said. "And no one has his arms around him – it's by no means centralized and planned, and people are trying to understand it."

In Charlotte, many African Americans work in sectors such as hotels and retail, where wages stagnate. This reflects the national trend, where wages rose more slowly for them than any other group.

Do not see the graph above? Click here.

The city is bridging this gap by issuing a $ 50 million bond to promote affordable housing and launching new programs to give local workers the skills they need for jobs in finance and banking. technology. But the change is slow.

Don Thomas is at the forefront of this change. In Chicago, he and his wife Monica worked with children in the juvenile justice system until the end of funding for their work. In Charlotte, he is director of the community impact of Leading on Opportunity, an organization dedicated to improving economic mobility in the city.

The couple bought a house in the suburbs of Mint Hill. He sits on a half-acre where their three children and the family dog ​​can run and play freely.

In Chicago, Thomas worries about the safety of his children, especially after the loss of a friend during a shootout.

"The gun violence started to get closer to where we lived," said Thomas. Charlotte feels safer, he says.

Nevertheless, the efforts of Charlotte officials and idealistic newcomers can not go that far.

Nicole Muse-Dennis has met some of these new arrivals at Sydney's Martini and Wine Bar, where she runs the night. The day she teaches special education.

"I'm what I call over-employment," she says. "I have two jobs and I always try to do it."

Muse-Dennis says raising two girls as a single mother with a teacher's salary forced her to spend a 65-hour work week.

On Friday morning, she gets up at 5 am and walks her dog in the dark before taking her daughter to school for a field trip. She takes an energy drink named Full Throttle out of the house while she prepares for a 40-minute drive.

"The difficult part is just to make sure I get up, actually I get up in the morning," she says. "Then make sure I can really drive there."

Muse-Dennis owns his townhouse in a middle-class neighborhood called University City. The value of his house has increased in recent years, but his taxes have also increased gradually.

While Muse-Dennis strives to make a living, Brittany Smith, the Detroit transplant, is not as expansive. Smith and her husband both have high-paying jobs that they love and they have a child. But Smith says she's lucky. She is the first of her family to go to college.

"I'm here, a transplant … and I took advantage of all these opportunities," Smith said, while feeding his daughter Erelah a bag of organic sweet potatoes. "Now it may be due to the fact that I have an education and the same for my husband, but it has also made … my husband and I … are looking for ways to contribute to the reduction of l & # 39; gap ".

The structural problems that keep many African Americans unemployed or underpaid are difficult to solve. But a strong economy opens up more prospects for success for the Smith family and for millions of other African-Americans who are starting a new life in the South.