Creating jobs tops Durham mayor's list of goals

DURHAM -- In his State of the City address Feb. 6, one of Mayor Bill Bell's priorities for 2012 was "to help create jobs for our residents and train them to fill those jobs."

Jobs were a particular priority, he said, for the city's black residents, whose unemployment rate is almost four times that of whites.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey estimates for 2010, for city residents more than 16 years old, unemployment rates are:

Overall: 12 percent

White: 5.7 percent

Black: 19.6 percent

In human terms, that is 9,110 members of Durham's black labor force who are out of jobs. Whatever the jobless rates for Durham as a whole, the needs for work and training to work are most acute among blacks.

The Census Bureau divides Durham County into 60 districts. Black unemployment in 2010 was higher than 20 percent in 13 census districts, with a 39.2 percent rate in the C.C. Spaulding School area, 33 percent near the Oxford Manor public-housing complex and 32 percent in Old North Durham. Crest Street and McDougald Terrace neighborhoods were 28 percent and 26.3 percent, respectively.

Bell also pointed out that unemployment rates decline with formal education:

For those with four-year college degrees: 4.6 percent

For those without high-school diplomas or GED: 22.5 percent

"One of the things we've got to get a better handle on is, what are the skills of the persons that are unemployed," Bell told The Durham News last week. "And if the skills (employers want) are not there, how can we provide training."

Unemployment also correlates with age. For those age 16 through 24, the unemployment rate is 27 percent. Almost 30 percent of Durham residents age 16 through 19 are in the labor force, with an unemployment rate of 43 percent. Seventy percent of those age 20 through 24 are in the labor force, with 17.7 percent. unemployed.

The city has a Mayor's Summer Youth Work Program for residents age 14 to 21 to get some workplace experience. The program places about 300 participants in jobs with the city administration and outside employers, if they qualify through an application process similar to that they would face in the grown-up working world.

That process is training in itself, Bell said. "Even if you don't get a job you have the experience (of applying)," he said. "The Mayor's Summer Youth Program is really an opportunity to try to introduce kids to work that might not previously have had jobs. That's why we have the interview process."

Victoria Peterson, who directs a vocational training nonprofit and takes every opportunity to remind elected officials of the need for jobs and training among Durham's black youth, said she was cheered to hear the mayor emphasize those points. "Part of the problem that I see," she said, is that "we do not have enough (black) people that have their own businesses to hire African Americans." The city can help, she said, by ensuring that local and minority-owned firms get their shares of city business, either directly or as subcontractors.

"I think that's where we've been dropping the ball a little bit," Peterson said.

City Councilman Eugene Brown said the city can and does encourage hiring and training for blacks. One way is by offering subsidies to companies coming to Durham if they pledge to hire and/or train local minority residents. When it offers subsidies, Brown said, city policy is to pay them only if and when the company fulfills its pledge. "We don't give up-front money," he said.

Bell said understanding "what the skills are" among Durham's unemployed is important as a prelude to job creating and training, "and taking that into consideration when we talk about recruiting companies."

"We have got to find a way to reduce this high unemployment rate," he said. "If you are among the unemployed, you are not satisfied, and neither are we."