‘Progress slow’ in tackling minority employment gap

The unemployment rate among black and Asian people in the UK is still higher than that of white people, a new report from the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has claimed.

The employment rate for ethnic minority people in 2004 was 59.4%, compared to 74.7% for the working age population as a whole. Unemployment amongst ethnic minority workers in the UK is currently 11%, compared to 5% for white workers.

The TUC said that although more black and Asian people are employed in the UK today, compared to seven years ago, progress is still slow. The union warned that if the employment rate for black workers continued to rise at such a modest pace, it could take 46 years before the employment rate among black people is as high as that of the white population.

The TUC report found that the towns and cities with the highest unemployment rates in the UK also tended to have large ethnic minorities and warned that more black and Asian families were more likely to be poor, if one or more parents were unemployed.

The report also suggested that employers were still reluctant to recruit employees with an ethnic minority background, claiming that, whatever the level of qualification, an ethnic minority person was still more likely to be unemployed.

White people born abroad had more chance of finding employment in the UK, than black or Asian workers, the report said, stating that 72% of white workers born abroad had jobs in the UK, compared to 59.1% of black people born here.

The TUC said that active job creation schemes, aimed at helping lone parents, as well as sick or disabled people into work, concentrated on areas where unemployment was over 7%, could have “a significant impact” on the numbers of black and Asian people out of work.

The union also said that extending the Race Relations Amendment Act beyond the public sector could also help tackle the problem and urged the government to use its purchasing power to award contracts to companies who have demonstrated a commitment to recruitment policies that actively counter the discrimination that still exists.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: “If one or both parents in a family are out of work, there is less money to go around. And as more black and Asian adults are out of work, more ethnic minority children than white children are currently living in poverty.

“Tackling employer prejudice and bigotry during the recruitment process must be a priority for unions, but active job creation schemes targeted on areas of high unemployment are also a must if we are not to continue to see huge differences in the numbers of black and white people out of work for the next 50 years.”

(KMcA/MB)