Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. The non-profit news organization, The City, is out with a report on unemployment by race in New York that finds ongoing striking disparities between Black and other groups' unemployment rates. I'm going to read you a little bit of this on what is perhaps the most disturbing particular fact and stat. This has a measurement called out of work and out of school or OSOW, sheds light on the depths of this crisis for young Black males in New York City.

Those who fall into this category are neither working nor looking for work nor going to school to get the credentials and skills needed to find a job. New figures from the Center for New York City Affairs shows the OSOW rate for young Black males aged 18 to 24 in the second quarter of this year was 26%. By far, the highest of any other age, racial, or gender group. "Young Black males have suffered outsized employment and labor force impacts from the pandemic and the recent economic slowdown," quoting the economist, James Parrott.

With me now, we have Greg David, business and economics reporter for the news organization, The City, and the director of the Business & Economic Reporting Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and Safiyah Riddle, a freelance journalist who reported this story with Greg during her recent internship at The City. Greg and Safiyah, welcome back to WNYC.

Greg David: Thank you, Brian.

Safiyah Riddle: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: We'll also be talking to Greg briefly in this conversation about the court ruling in New York yesterday that found The Trump Organization committed a lot of business fraud. Seems to order The Trump Organization out of business in New York, though more court proceedings on this are upcoming. We'll get to that. Greg, do you want to start by talking more about this unemployment stat that many of our listeners may have never heard of before? Out of work and out of school.

Greg David: Yes, it's relatively new to me too. At The City, we've been worried and writing stories about the Black unemployment rate for more than a year and a half. Much of the really good data work on this is being done by James Parrott at the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School. Originally, I saw a stat that said that 15%, the Black unemployment rate in New York was 15%, and that was so much higher.

This stat goes beyond just the unemployment rate because the unemployment rate is coming down for Blacks. It's still very high because you're not counted in the workforce if you're in school or not looking for a job. This stat really encompasses people who are, to use a phrase that I've heard a lot lately, disconnected from work. 26% is an extraordinary number. With the other numbers we have, the Black unemployment rate was 15%.

In May, when the two of us published another story, the gap between the Black and white unemployment rate was nine times. This is a crisis in New York. One of the things that Safiyah can talk about is it's not a crisis elsewhere in the country. The gap between the Black and white unemployment rate and the rest of the country is as low as it's ever been. This is really an important issue that I think New York has to focus in on.

Brian Lehrer: Safiyah, you want to pick it up on that point and talk about those comparisons that you looked at?

Safiyah Riddle: Sure. As recently as last month, the unemployment gap between Black people and white people across the country narrowed once again even at a time when in cities like New York, Chicago, DC, that gap remains much, much larger. Part of what Greg and I did for these stories was to just look into why there was such a persistent disparity between these cities and elsewhere in the country. In Florida specifically, the gap is as low as 1%. In Louisiana, it's as low as 1.5%. In other places, the Black unemployment rate is hovering around national levels. It's really an inconsistent story. It's a story of different recoveries across different places across the country.

Brian Lehrer: Where do you start, Safiyah, to answer the question why?

Safiyah Riddle: Well, it's a challenging question to answer and there's not really a simple, straightforward answer. Some economists have pointed to the fact that wages actually grew faster in states like Florida, Louisiana, and Georgia than in New York and Chicago. In Florida, for example, Black men saw a median wage increase of 29% or $4 an hour, almost $5 an hour between 2020 and 2022, according to a study.

In New York, at the same time, earnings for Black workers rose only 17%. We're seeing that that disparity actually pulls more people into the workforce in states where wages grew much faster. Another thing that Greg can speak to is the disparities in the recoveries in different industries across the country. Greg has reported on how retail jobs have not really come back in New York. Greg, I can let you speak to that and how that's affected Black workers.

Greg David: One of the major causes that we've uncovered is that the recovery has eliminated or made difficult many jobs that are entry-level jobs for people with modest or educational skills. That's clearly hurt many young people in New York and many young Black men in New York as well. A third factor that we think is really important and has to do with the unemployment number, not as much as the second number we've been talking about, is as people have been reporting and writing about extensively.

There's a major exodus of middle-class Blacks from New York. Some of whom are going to the suburbs, but the biggest number are going to the South. This exodus is actually reducing the number of Blacks in New York who are working. That's a statistical thing that's weighing in and driving up the unemployment rate. It's also a broader problem, of course, because, obviously, these are people who we would love to keep in New York.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if anybody wants to weigh in on this with your personal story or that of someone you know or a question for our two guests from the non-profit news organization, The City, we welcome your stories. We welcome your policy suggestions. We welcome your questions. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Obviously, Black listeners in particular, is this resonating with you at the personal level as they look at it at the macro-data level regarding unemployment disparities by race in New York and compared to other places in the country? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Greg, are there policy proposals that are active to deal with this disparity?

Greg David: Well, Brian, I just smiled because when we do these stories, I contact the mayor's office and say, "Do you want to weigh in?" I never get an interview, but I always get the same statement. The same statement is, "We understand. This is a really important problem." We have launched all these economic programs to deal with it, which is the big-deal economic program that the mayor and the deputy mayor outlined a few months into the administration.

It's very hard for me to write about it because every time I do, my editors say to me, "Can you be more specific?" For example, one way we could deal with this is that we could have a good workforce development program in New York. Everyone, including the officials in the Adams administration, say, "We need to fix the workforce development program." A few months ago, they issued a major report, which was about a year late, I think, about how to do it.

I didn't write about it because, frankly, I knew if I had written about it, my editor would have said to me, "Can we have any specifics here?" I can't get any specifics here. I think that there isn't enough being done about it and it's not being specifically targeted. Some of the people I talked to about it say, "Well, maybe the administration doesn't think it's good to have some specific Black worker or Black New Yorker-oriented program." This is not getting the attention it should. James Parrott at the Center for New York City is doing yeoman's work on it.

The Community Service Society is working on the issue and working hard, but The New York Times has written one story about it. Virtually, nobody else has written on it. We need a lot more focus on it and we do need more policy ideas. Obviously, it has to do with the education system. It has to do with the workforce system. To be frank, I think Parrott and the people at CSS and I would agree, we don't know enough about this. We need more research on it too.

Brian Lehrer: Safiyah, I don't know if you did any of the political side of this reporting as well as the economic side, but anything to add with respect to the Adams administration? I think we're talking about people in Mayor Adams' base. Working-class Black New Yorkers are who elected him more than probably any other individual demographic group in New York. It's probably fair to say that he gets the community and pressures on the communities that we're talking about even despite the lack of specific policies that Greg was just outlining, but I'm just curious if you have any reporting or any thoughts about the Adams administration in this issue.

Safiyah Riddle: Yes, a couple of things. I think the first is that the last reason that Greg mentioned about the increasing or that persistently high Black unemployment rate is that Black people are leaving and a lot of Black voters are leaving. I think the ability to articulate coherent demands from the administration is often disrupted by how often these communities are torn apart and that people are driven out.

I think the other point that I'll add to Greg's point about data collection is it's even more difficult to get data on this from elsewhere in the country to offer points of comparison. There's different levels of interest. I was calling departments of commerce from states all over the country. Some people talked to me like I was crazy. I had no idea why I was even asking for something like that. As much as it's challenging to find this data in New York, it's even more challenging elsewhere. I think it presents a really difficult obstacle and even articulating any type of policy to address the issue.

Brian Lehrer: We have a few more minutes with Greg David, business and economics reporter for the news organization, The City, and director of the Business & Economics Reporting Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and Safiyah Riddle, a freelance journalist who also reported this story with Greg for The City during her recent internship this year.

The story being about the wide unemployment disparities by race in New York City in that they are wider than most other places in the city, including this really disturbing stat that 26% in the second quarter of this year of young Black males were in the category known as OSOW, out of work and out of school. We're going to take a call in a minute. Greg, I just want to make sure that I'm not miscontextualizing that very disturbing stat. Does it mean that of all the Black men in New York aged 18 to 24, fully a quarter of them are neither in school, in work, or looking for work?

Greg David: Yes, that's what it means. We would put that under the heading of, they are disconnected from work and the labor force. Obviously, that's a big problem because once you just get disconnected, it's hard to get reconnected.

Brian Lehrer: Don in Teaneck, you're on WNYC. Hi, Don.

Don: Yes, I don't know whether you heard me before. Certainly, there's a tremendous amount of alienation amongst Black men in particular, and the fact that there's different kinds of Blacks coming from different areas of the country who are farmers. They come with a much stronger work ethic than the alienated Blacks who've been born and raised here in the United States. I do believe that with the proper kind of sampling, you can get an idea of what that means.

Brian Lehrer: Don, thank you. I fear that as a stereotype, Safiyah, but I wonder if you looked in this reporting at the rates comparatively between Black immigrants in that age group or children of immigrants and those whose families have been in this country longer.

Safiyah Riddle: We didn't, and I'm not sure that that data is available, but what I will say is that when you look at wages and how slowly wages have grown in New York City, there's actually a lot of logical disincentivization for getting very low-paying jobs. If you're someone with a child who has to consider how expensive childcare is and your wages won't cover childcare, then that's a legitimate question of whether it makes sense to get a job or stay home with the kid. There's a lot of situations like that. I don't think it's a question of work ethic at all or desire to work at all, but more so of opportunities that actually provide wages that people can live off of.

Brian Lehrer: Greg, do you want to continue on that at all?

Greg David: Yes, I think it's clear that fast-growing areas of the country are attracting Black people in large numbers. I think that's what the work showed about Florida, also Atlanta. The situation is the very low Black unemployment rate in Atlanta. The question, I am in no position to answer. Another question I'd like to raise is the question of racism because, obviously, racism is at the fundamental level about this issue. I don't know. Is there more racism in New York than Atlanta or Miami, or if not, is it not an issue? Just a question I have and I intend to continue to report this story and ask people about this question more.

Brian Lehrer: Even the stat of Black people moving from New York to Florida would probably surprise many listeners, Safiyah, because we hear about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis barring the teaching of racism in many contexts in the public schools there and other pretty explicitly racist things that are going on at the policy level, and yet the immigration flow domestically in this country is more from here to there than from there to here?

Safiyah Riddle: Yes, it is. In particular, Black people are leaving cities like New York and Chicago and Detroit, cities that historically have significantly large Black populations. The reason is really not about political rhetoric. It's about material safety and your material ability to provide for yourself and your family. It's gotten extremely expensive to live in these northern cities. People can't buy homes anymore. People can't provide for their families in the same way anymore.

The dollar just doesn't go as far. A lot of people are disturbed probably. Especially Democratic Black people are disturbed by the rhetoric that's coming out of the South. In reality, there's material concerns that outweigh that. That's ultimately what we found in our reporting were the reasons that people were leaving and, in particular, lower-middle-class people who have a bit of job security and who have the means to leave.

Brian Lehrer: Another way to look at this story, Greg, might be in the context of what media does report in New York but without breaking it down racially as much as your reporting has done and James Parrott's work at The New School has done, and that is that with affordable housing crisis in New York City, New York is becoming more of a place of concentration of people of means. We're looking in this story at how it expresses racially because we know that Black people generally have less money than white people. Is that a fair way to look at this?

Greg David: I think it's a fair way. It's another factor in this story. We've talked about housing on the show and you're spending a lot of time on it. The mayor's new housing plan. I listened to the piece you did with Vicki Been last week. We need to build more affordable housing and we need to build affordable housing in areas that are increasingly wealthy. Yes, it's part of the issue for sure.

Brian Lehrer: Dorothy in Kearny, you're on WNYC. Hi, Dorothy.

Dorothy: Hello, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. My dilemma is that we're always reporting on the Black male who was unemployed or not going to school. Let's look at the Black female who is hustling like anything. I've been on the college campus forever and I see how hard they work and how they hold themselves and they want to succeed. I also see them in the workforce. Please address that issue.

Brian Lehrer: Dorothy, thank you. Again, I have to say, I think some of the callers' comments get at some racial stereotypes there at the very least by implication. Safiyah, we are talking statistically about Black males being in this out-of-work condition. What about Black females?

Safiyah Riddle: Yes, the gap is just not as significant for Black females, and I think that there's a number of reasons why that might be the case. Dorothy, I completely agree that it's worth looking at and certainly informs our understanding and our reporting of why the situation is so particularly bad for this specific demographic of young Black males. Why is that demographic the most alienated and the most disconnected from both school and employment opportunities? I definitely hear you, and I think that's a factor that we're considering, a disparity that we're considering.

Brian Lehrer: In fact, this sets up a segment that we're going to do in about five minutes on the show, and that is a broader look at affirmative action for men. There's a racial component, but not just a racial component, affirmative action for men in college admissions. That's going to be a segment that's coming up in just a few minutes on the show, but Greg, go ahead.

Greg David: I was just going to say that if you look at all the demographics, women have done better in New York than men in the pandemic recovery. Their workforce participation numbers, above pre-pandemic levels. At one point, we're talking about a she-recession. Well, this should be the she-recovery. In fact, young Black women are doing much better than young Black men, which is what led us to frame the story this way.

Brian Lehrer: We're almost out of time. Greg, I mentioned to the listeners at the beginning of the segment, and I know you know this is coming, that I also wanted to ask you through the lens of your business reporting experience about the business side of the court ruling yesterday on The Trump Organization. I know it'll be appealed, but I wonder if you could explain to the listeners a little bit, the standards of doing business honestly that The Trump Organization was found to have violated, and also to talk about the remedy, which the way I'm reading it, and I don't claim to really understand it, but it looks like a corporate death penalty in the state and if that's something you've seen before.

Greg David: No, I have not seen that before to my knowledge that I remember seeing. I think it's an extraordinary penalty that's being levied here. I think some cases of fraud are handled criminally, but a lot of them involve civil judgments, et cetera. It's an extraordinary penalty. I'm very interested, Brian, in the way you frame this about the standard because I don't think that Donald Trump is the first real estate person to exaggerate on loan documents, right?

The question is, to me, and I don't have any answer for you and I actually would love to know the answer myself, was Trump's actions so outrageous as to go very much beyond the pale? Given what we know about Donald Trump, the answer might clearly be yes. The question is how typical is this of exaggerating, especially what a building is worth? How does this system operate? I think there's a lot of room for an investigation on that in New York.

As for its impact on The Trump Organization, well, I think it's clearly going to be devastating. He's going to lose key properties. He's going to be faced with a judgment. Reporting this morning suggests he's going to have to sell properties. I don't know. It's clearly a big blow to him. I guess if you're engaged in four other criminal trials, maybe it isn't your most important worry. In my view, this is not something that happens every day, every week, or even every year in New York.

Brian Lehrer: Greg David, business and economics reporter for the news organization, The City, and director of the Business & Economics Reporting Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and Safiyah Riddle, a freelance journalist who reported the story of the unemployment rates with Greg during her recent internship at The City. Thank you both so much for coming on.

Greg David: Thank you, Brian.

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