The average college graduate faces high unemployment numbers, but for recent black college alumni, those numbers are worse.
A May study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research analyzed labor-market activity in 2013 and found black college alumni faced an unemployment rate of 12.4 percent, more than twice as high as all other races combined.
Statistics like these show the prevalence of racial discrimination in the workplace, said Nicholas Carre, a 20-year-old UF political science junior and the treasurer of UF’s Black Student Union.
“It’s definitely not the Jim Crow we see today where it’s completely blatant,” he said. “Equal opportunity in the workplace isn’t necessarily one of those things that has completely evolved.”
According to UF Multicultural and Diversity Affairs, as of 2013, 6.63 percent of the Student Body is black. But universities don’t mimic the corporate world, said Luisa Amelia Dempere, chair of the President’s Council on Diversity at UF.
“There is a general lack of awareness and a lack of embracing diversity,” She said. “If certain companies gave more value to that, we’d probably see different numbers.”
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 6/17/2014 under the headline "Study: Black alumni may find less work"]
