December 29, 2021
CEPR recently welcomed Dr. Algernon Austin to our staff as Director for Race and Economic Justice. Algernon is an accomplished scholar with an outstanding record of research and publications on racial inequality and the US economy. As CEPR Co-director Eileen Appelbaum remarked, “I am very pleased that CEPR will now be able to expand our domestic research and policy work on economic justice and the quest for equity in the labor market.”
Algernon has already made important contributions to CEPR’s work on uncovering and addressing racial inequality in the US labor market. His most recent research paper, “The Jobs Crisis for Black Men is a Lot Worse Than You Think”, found that the problem of joblessness for Black men is on average three times worse than what is generally assumed.
This research follows an earlier report by Dean Baker and Julie Yixia Cai showing that the high and rising non-response rate in the Current Population Survey underestimates unemployment for less advantaged workers, particularly young Black men. Julie and Dean presented the paper in a panel discussion hosted by the Institute for New Economic Thinking. They also discussed their research findings with staff at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In 2021, CEPR continued to produce a broad range of work on racial inequality in the US economy. CEPR documented “Housing Insecurity by Race and Place During the Pandemic,” showed that climate change will produce disproportionate harm to people of color, revealed the impoverishment of Latino and Black home health care workers, and covered several other topics related to race and economic justice.
Thanks again to all of you who have donated to CEPR’s Spotlight campaign. If you haven’t, please consider a donation to CEPR so that we can continue this important work at the intersection of racial and economic justice.
