As we approach Labor Day 2003, the economic boom of the 1990s has already become a distant memory for Milwaukee's labor market. Through most of the 1990s, the unemployment rate for city residents ran below or close to the national average for the nation's 50 largest cities. Today, at 9.3 percent, Milwaukee's unemployment rate is over two percentage points higher than the national "big city" average, and significantly higher than the 5.7 percent unemployment rate at which it began the 1990s. In 2003, among the nation's 50 largest cities, Milwaukee had the 44th highest unemployment rate. Only Cleveland, Detroit, Fresno, Miami, Oakland, and San Jose posted higher rates.
Among the cities and metropolitan areas surveyed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Milwaukee had the highest rates of black unemployment (18.5% in the city, 17.4% in the metro area) in 2001, the most recent data available. The gap in white and black unemployment rates in Milwaukee was among the largest in the nation; in metro Milwaukee, the black unemployment rate was over four times higher than the white rate in 2001. In the city of Milwaukee in 2001, according to "supplementary survey" data released by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, white male teenagers (ages 16-19) had a lower unemployment rate (17.9%) than prime working-age (25-54) black males (18.6%).
| Two paragraphs leap out most readily from the executive summary of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee's ""Stealth Depression" Joblessness in the City of Milwaukee Since 1990"
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posted in data on August 27, 2003 11:15 PM | t (3)
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