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What’s on the Economic Horizon for Black America in 2015?

Published

12 years ago

January 13, 2015

by Starla Muhammad
Special to the NNPA from The Final Call

(FinalCall.com) – While the overall economic picture generated optimism for some last year, as the country heads into 2015 a majority of low and middle income Black, Brown and poor Americans still suffer from financial struggles carried over from the Great Recession.

President Barack Obama, at his end of year press conference, spoke of the creation of 11 million new jobs by businesses over a 57-month period. These gains are the result of steps taken early on by this administration to rescue the economy, said the president.

“Almost all the job growth that we’ve seen has been in full-time positions. Much of the recent pickup in job growth has been in higher-paying industries. And in a hopeful sign for middle-class families, wages are on the rise again,” said Mr. Obama to reporters Dec. 19.

According to the White House, the “U.S. economic recovery took a major step forward in 2014, achieving a number of important milestones.”

In its “Year in Review: Creating Economic Opportunity for all Americans in 2014,” among accomplishments the administration touted:

November, 2014 was the best year of job growth since 1999.

Fifteen thousand jobs were added by the manufacturing sector.

The U.S. has the highest graduation rate on record and more Americans earning post-secondary degrees than ever.

The U.S. was on top as the leading oil and gas producer globally.

There was a continued rise in home prices which cut the number of upside down mortgages from a peak of 14 million to less than 4 million.

Ten million Americans are now insured under the Affordable Care Act and there is a slower rate of rising health care costs.

The federal deficit has been cut by nearly two-thirds.

Additionally, overall unemployment rates continued to fall, averaging in single digits while oil prices decreased globally, meaning lower prices at gas pumps for American consumers.

Growth during the last two quarters for the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is the goods and services consumers purchase, is one economic indicator analysts used when looking at the overall health of the economy noted economist Dr. Julianne Malveaux explained to The Final Call. The third quarter reflected an increase in GDP of 5 percent, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. Personal income increased $54.4 billion, or 0.4 percent, disposable personal income increased $42.4 billion, or 0.3 percent, private wages and salaries increased $38.7 billion and goods-producing industries’ payrolls increased $7.3 billion all in November, according to the department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. Government wages and salaries also increased $1.8 billion.

“People are poised to spend. At the same time, there is a clear divide between the top and the bottom,” said Dr. Malveaux.

Uneven economic recovery

“You have this bifurcation that says the economy is doing very well and you have people that are saying, ‘but what about me?’ Of course when White America experiences some discomfort, Black America experiences extreme discomfort,” said Dr. Malveaux.

“If I were to summarize the year 2014 there have been macro-economic gains like GDP growth, etc., and micro-economic stagnancy, if not reversals. And so it has not been a stellar year for African Americans. There is vulnerability here in our community that we can’t ignore.”

Blacks continued to make up disproportionately high numbers of the unemployed, lagged behind in income equality and housing disparities and other socio-economic areas in comparison to Whites.

Double digit unemployment continued to plague Black America in 2014. In the final numbers released by the U.S. Department of Labor for November 2014, the overall unemployment rate was 5.8 percent or 9.1 million people out of work. The rate for Blacks was 11.1 percent, for Whites 4.9 percent and for Latinos 6.6 percent. December’s numbers will be released in early January 2015.

“While you see a lower unemployment rate the employment population ratio, which means the percentage of people who are actually working, for White men that number is nearly 70 percent, for Black men the number does not clear 60 percent,” said Dr. Malveaux.

If it’s wealth you see less, if it’s poverty you see more among Blacks, said Dr. Malveaux, president emerita of Bennett College for Women.

Several reports and analysis released in 2014 reflected continued gaps in key areas.

According to talkpoverty.org, in 2013, there were 11 million Blacks in poverty, the equivalent of 27 percent of the overall poverty rate. The Black child poverty rate stood at 38.3 percent. Blacks currently make up between 12-13 percent of the U.S. population.

Much of the wealth accumulated over the last five years has been stock market gains because the Dow has gone up alongside acceleration in housing values. But few Blacks invest in the stock market and a greater percentage of Whites own their homes compared to Blacks, said Dr. Malveaux.

After the real estate bubble burst, home values finally began to stabilize between 2010 and 2013 but at a rate slower for Blacks. Between those years inflation-adjusted median home values fell by 4.6 percent for White households and 18.4 percent for Black households, according to an October report by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

Also, the Federal Reserve has artificially kept interest rates low which impacts the Black community, said Dr. Malveaux. “They’ve kept rates low to stimulate employment. Raising interest rates makes it more difficult for businesses to borrow and therefore more difficult for businesses to hire.”

Many businesses have borrowed but the effect has not trickled down to the masses, she explained.

Asians have fully recovered from the recession; Whites have about 90 percent of what they had before the recession, Latinos have 60 percent and Blacks have 50 percent, added Dr. Malveaux.

More of the same?

Income, asset ownership and the state of Black business are key areas that must be analyzed in determining the progress of Black people, said Cedric Muhammad, an economic strategist, analyst and author of “The Entrepreneurial Secret.” “On those three measures I would say things are more pessimistic,” he told The Final Call.

The Pew Research Center released a mid-December report stating that the wealth of White households was 13 times the median wealth of Black households in 2013, compared to eight times the wealth in 2010.

The median wealth of Black households fell to $11,000 in 2013 compared to Whites which actually increased from $138,000 to $141,000 during the same years.

The median income of Whites is also nearly double that of Blacks.

There are over 2 million Black-owned businesses in the U.S. but only 100,000 of those businesses have more than one paid employee.

“If you look at percentages and ratios none of those is an improvement over our historic deficit with White Americans,” said Mr. Muhammad. He referred to “A Torchlight for America,” a book by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam which pointed out the rate of gain it would take Blacks to completely close the gap in income with Whites. “It shows it would take 400 years for us to completely close the gap,” said Mr. Muhammad.

Dr. Malveaux expects more of the same or worse in 2015 especially now that Republicans have gained control of both houses of Congress. They will be freer to explore their policies that have been hostile to the people at the bottom, she said.

“While they have increased the amount of money that corporations can give to campaigns and to PACs (Political Action Committees), consolidating power among the wealthy, they have been very parsimonious when it comes to benefits and assistance to people at the bottom.”

She expects the GOP to make cuts which will disproportionately affect Blacks like SNAP benefits, formerly known as the federal food stamp program. She expects fewer federal Pell grants to be made available which is the method many poor people rely on to pay for college.

“We can expect to see some erosion of Black economic status. I don’t see anything, and I could be wrong and I hope I am, that suggests anyone is focused on the well-being of African American people. The Congressional Black Caucus has certainly been episodically effective … but they’re an extreme minority. It has been challenging for them to influence public policy,” said Dr. Malveaux.

Changes in public policy, regulations or legislation that would benefit or work for those who continue to struggle in the GOP-dominated Congress are unlikely, she added.

“There is no reason for them to do anything than what they’ve always done which is take it from the needy to give it to the greedy.”

Black people must begin to build wealth through asset, business ownership and land acquisition and not be distracted from focusing on real economic indicators, said Cedric Muhammad.

Viable solution at hand

Like his teacher the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Minister Farrakhan has consistently stressed the critical need for Black people to “Do for self or suffer the consequences.” Other communities have demonstrated this principle to their benefit.

Collective economic power enables residents in various ethnic enclaves to control the politics and affairs of their communities.

With over $1 trillion in spending power for over 45 million Black people in America that is often talked about, strategic economic targeting of where that money is spent is key to progress.

In his enlightening online lecture series, “The Time and What Must Be Done,” Min. Farrakhan spoke to this very issue.

“Did you know six cents of every dollar is all we spend with Black Businesses? And according to one study made by the Gazelle Index, a national quarterly survey of CEOs of high performing small businesses and businesses owned by diverse groups, if we double what we spend to 12 cents, that alone would create nearly 600,000 additional jobs for Black workers, and would reduce the Black unemployment rate by more than three points (from 13.8 percent to 10.6 percent),” said Min. Farrakhan.

“Don’t tell me ‘we don’t have the power!’ We just have never used it wisely,” he continued. Under the Muslim leader’s direction, the Nation of Islam reintroduced Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint, a program designed to help end poverty and want in the Black community. The program calls for 16 million wage earning Blacks to contribute 35 cents weekly to purchase farmland and help create industry and businesses to begin providing jobs. Such a small amount of painless sacrifice would net over $291 million in one year.

“Today guess what, collectively, we are still richer than 19 countries in the world. Just think about how rich you and I are. That’s why if we support in this year 2015, Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint, it’s only $1.40 a week, it’s only $18.40 a year. But collectively we would have a national treasury that we could begin to get land, because America is for sale,” Ishmael R. Muhammad, student national assistant to Min. Farrakhan and a son of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad told the audience at Mosque Maryam, in a Dec. 28 address.

The program would be a mechanism to buy up the empty lots and abandoned buildings and put young Black people to work to renovate these buildings put them back on the market to provide decent housing to the people, said student Minister Ishmael Muhammad.

“Let’s open up the grocery stores that are missing in these food deserts. It’s not on government to do it for us it’s on us to do it for ourselves.”

For more information on Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint, visit www.economicblueprint.org.

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OPINION: 57,000 Empty Apartments and Not a Word of Apology – City Limits

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — “Short-term rental income was, for many of these families, not a luxury. It was the margin between keeping the house and losing it. Local Law 18 closed that door, and the people who closed it are now waving away 57,000 empty apartments as statistical noise.”

Published

5 days ago

August 20, 2026

bpusa-syndication

OPINION: 57,000 Empty Apartments and Not a Word of Apology - City Limits

Every indicator in New York City’s housing market is pointing in the wrong direction.

Rents are at historic highs. Foreclosure notices are climbing in Black and brown neighborhoods that never fully recovered from the last crisis. Deed theft, the predatory stripping of generational wealth from families who built their equity over decades, continues to devastate communities from Brownsville to Jamaica.

On top of all these factors, there were more than 57,000 rent-stabilized apartments sitting completely empty as of April last year. That number grew by 8,000 units in a single year, with the sharpest increases hitting Brooklyn and Queens hardest.

Brooklyn and Queens. My neighborhoods. Your neighborhoods.

You would think that news of 57,000 empty affordable apartments in the middle of a housing emergency would produce outrage, emergency hearings, and demands for accountability. Instead, New Yorkers got a collective shrug from opinion leaders.

Read that again: 57,000 families could be housed in those apartments. Households currently paying market rent, doubled up, couch-surfing, or one missed paycheck away from the street could have relief. And silence from the city’s housing leadership, activists, and coalitions.

In my experience as chair of the Subcommittee on Affordable Housing in the Assembly, that is not advocacy. That is surrender.

These are the same voices, the same institutions, the same political class that successfully lobbied to effectively ban short-term rentals in New York City through Local Law 18. At its peak, Airbnb had roughly 20,000 listings in New York City, nearly a third the number of apartments currently sitting vacant and padlocked in the rent-stabilized system. The campaign against those listings was relentless, loud, and wrapped in the language of affordability and housing justice.

Where is that energy now?

Where are the press conferences about landlords warehousing stabilized units while families sleep in shelters? Where is the legislation with teeth? Where is the outrage that was apparently plentiful when a Black homeowner in Bed Stuy wanted to rent out her spare bedroom to make ends meet?

Because that is exactly who Local Law 18 hit hardest. Not the corporate bad actors. Not the hedge funds. The struggling homeowner, disproportionately Black, disproportionately in Brooklyn and Queens, who used their home as a small economic engine to survive in a city that grows more expensive by the month.

Those families were told their activity was destabilizing the housing market. Those families were fined, delisted, and legislated out of a livelihood. And now we learn that 57,000 stabilized units are sitting empty while rents spiral and foreclosures mount, and the response from housing advocates is essentially: that’s just how big numbers work.

This is not sound policy. This is politics. And the communities paying the price know the difference.

I have spoken with homeowners across Central Brooklyn who are barely holding on. They bought their homes, sometimes one generation removed from the Great Migration, and they have watched the equity they built become both their greatest asset and their greatest vulnerability. Predatory lenders, deed theft schemes, and rising property taxes all circle that equity like wolves.

Short-term rental income was, for many of these families, not a luxury. It was the margin between keeping the house and losing it. Local Law 18 closed that door, and the people who closed it are now waving away 57,000 empty apartments as statistical noise.

Everyone in this fight knows what needs to happen but will not say it out loud: Local Law 18 needs reform. Common sense reform. The kind that distinguishes between an investor running a ghost hotel and a homeowner renting a room. The kind that actually targets bad actors instead of penalizing the most economically vulnerable property owners in the city.

I hear it in private conversations with elected officials, with housing attorneys, with planners. The consensus is there. The political will is not, because the same advocacy groups and political donors who pushed the original law are still in the room, and nobody wants to take their call.

What this moment requires is courage, not calculation.

Every month that passes with 57,000 empty stabilized apartments is a month of families in crisis, of shelter costs ballooning, of neighborhoods destabilizing. Every month that Local Law 18 remains unreformed is another month a Black homeowner in Flatbush or Hollis faces impossible choices that wealthier New Yorkers simply never have to make.

You cannot ban the small and ignore the large. You cannot mobilize armies of lobbyists against a homeowner’s spare bedroom while shrugging at tens of thousands of warehoused affordable units. You cannot claim to stand for housing justice and then tell 57,000 families worth of empty apartments that the math just works out this way.

The hypocrisy has to stop. Politics have to give way to people. And the officials and advocates who have the power to fix this, who know what needs to be done, have to decide which side they are actually on.

Because from where I stand, in the communities I have served for decades, it is very clear who is being left out in the cold.

Dr. Annette Robinson is a former member of both the State Assembly and City Council in Brooklyn.

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Black History

NABJ Convention Brings Black Journalists, Civic Leaders Together in Atlanta

Among the conference’s most closely watched sessions was Thursday’s Newsmaker Plenary, where House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries discussed the national political climate with NABJ President Errin Haines. Journalist Joy-Ann Reid later led a fireside conversation with legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, creator of the term “intersectionality,” and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the 1619 Project.

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5 days ago

August 20, 2026

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Civil Rights Attorney Ben Crump (left), House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (middle), Rev. Al Sharpton (right) stand at the NABJ conference in Atlanta on Aug. 13 with Elmore and Christine Wonsley, the parents of Nolan Wells, a Black 18-year-old who died July 4th weekend in Mississippi

By Brandon Patterson

ATLANTA—The 52nd National Association of Black Journalists conference brought thousands of journalists, students, media executives and civic leaders to Atlanta Aug. 12-16 for its 2026 Convention and Career Fair, a five-day gathering centered on the theme “Our Revolution: Truth, Power and Black Journalism.”

The plenary also turned toward grief, accountability and justice as the parents of 18-year-old Nolan Wells, Christine Wells-Wonsley and Elmore Wonsley, appeared with civil rights attorney Ben Crump and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Crump was also the attorney for Trayvon Martin’s, Michael Brown’s, and Tamir Rice’s families. Moderated by journalist Tiffany Cross, the Wells family’s appearance focused on unanswered questions surrounding Nolan’s July death in Mississippi and calls for a federal review.

Reid and journalist Don Lemon also joined a separate discussion with Cross, columnist Michael Harriot and journalist Chandra Whitfield about career disruption, resilience and building independent platforms as Black journalists face layoffs and wider media industry upheaval.

Across generations, attendees exchanged ideas about sustaining careers and serving Black communities.

The gathering reflected NABJ’s long-standing role as both professional home and public forum for Black journalists. For Black-owned legacy newspapers, including ours, the Atlanta convention reinforced a familiar mandate: defend truth, elevate Black voices and connect national debates over politics, justice and media power to the communities most affected.

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Black History

$5 Billion Coliseum Vision Puts Oakland Jobs, Businesses at Center

Reynolds said Black and Brown contractors have historically lacked the bonding, insurance, equipment and staffing required to compete for large contracts because they were denied opportunities to expand.

Published

5 days ago

August 19, 2026

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At SpringHill Suites by Marriott Oakland Airport, AASEG President Ray Bobbitt with Loop Capital Vice President Al Dinwiddie, OAACC President Cathy Adams, and Loop Capital President James “Jim” Reynolds, Jr. Photo by Carla Thomas.

By Carla Thomas

OAKLAND – A sweeping, multiphase redevelopment of the Oakland Coliseum site led by Ray Bobbitt, president of the African American Sports and Entertainment Group (AASEG), and businessman James “Jim” Reynolds Jr., could eventually attract between $3 billion and $5 billion in investment.

Reynolds said the first phase, estimated at $1 billion to $1.5 billion, could include housing, hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues, open space and opportunities for local small businesses.

“We are going to transform the entire area with housing, hotels, with an infrastructure that benefits the community,” Reynolds said.

He also wants to attract major entertainment partners and position Oakland to compete with venues in San Francisco and San Jose. Reynolds said the city already possesses natural assets that other cities spend fortunes trying to create.

“One of the most naturally beautiful cities I’ve ever been to,” he said. “In Oakland, if you do nothing, it’s beautiful naturally: lakes, the mountains, the scenery, the open space, the weather.”

Reynolds’ vision, however, extends beyond buildings and entertainment. He is also focused on which businesses receive contracts and which residents benefit from the jobs and economic opportunities the project creates.

“Why would you build a big business when you know no one was going to hire you to do the job?” Reynolds asked.

He recalled working with longtime business partner Earvin “Magic” Johnson to encourage minority-owned firms to compete for larger contracts. About 1,000 businesses attended one outreach event after receiving assurances that opportunities to serve as prime contractors were real.

Reynolds wants to bring the same approach to Oakland.

“I don’t need goals and set-asides to figure out how to give Black companies a chance to be a prime,” he said.

He also wants Black businesses to move beyond seeking only small portions of projects or subcontracting roles.

At SpringHill Suites by Marriott Oakland Airport, Post News Group Publisher Paul Cobb, OAACC President Cathy Adams, and Loop Capital President James "Jim" Reynolds, Jr. Photo by Carla Thomas. — At SpringHill Suites by Marriott Oakland Airport, Post News Group Publisher Paul Cobb, OAACC President Cathy Adams, and Loop Capital President James “Jim” Reynolds, Jr. Photo by Carla Thomas.

“When we run the concessions, we pick who has a concession,” Reynolds said, citing partnerships involving Johnson, LL Cool J and Stephen A. Smith.

The same principle should apply to construction, entrepreneurship and workforce development, he said.

“Job training and opportunities to have Blacks lead something like this matter,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds also wants young Oakland residents connected to the jobs and career pathways created by the redevelopment.

“They’re going to have jobs, job training, and opportunities to work,” Reynolds said.

He rejects assumptions that Black youth and Black-owned companies cannot manage major responsibilities.

“I’m not going to sit here like others who have been in positions like this and doubt that Black people can do certain things,” Reynolds said.

For Reynolds and Bobbitt, the Coliseum redevelopment is an opportunity to create more than a replacement for the professional sports teams Oakland lost. Bobbitt contributes deep Oakland roots, community relationships and years of persistence, while Reynolds brings capital-market experience, global business relationships and a record of structuring enormous transactions.

Together, they envision a destination that attracts visitors while creating jobs, businesses and ownership opportunities for Oakland residents.

“Thank you, Jim, for believing in Oakland and investing,” Bobbitt said.

CEO of the Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce Cathy Adams, who wrote a letter of support for AASEG at a time when many doubted the feasibility of their goals, said the Coliseum area development plan will become the example of how Black-owned businesses and contractors can help close the disparity gap in Oakland.

Next week, Part 2: Len Turner and local business owners can benefit.