Unemployment and privilege, take 2

Regarding the unemployment levels of the working, service, and so-called creative classes, a commenter writes:

The working-service-creative class distinction. Is this fully an aspect of privilege? Why–because of connection to educational opportunities?

I stumbled across this graph earlier today.  Though Yglesias uses it to make a different point, I was struck by how closely the unemployment line of the creative class mirrors that of college graduates.

I know putting two graphs side-by-side doesn’t mean anything about their relationship, but it doesn’t make me take back my assertion that you can trace job class back to educational attainment back to socioeconomic status.

UPDATE: since most of you are seeing this in Google Reader and not on the actual blog, I’m comparing the graph above with the one below (not the two graphs above with each other).  Sorry, team.

Jonas

Yet another category of privilege

I follow the unemployment numbers–in general, but also by race and gender–pretty closely.  And they’re not good.  Overall unemployment is disheartening, but the racial breakdown is another reminder that we’ve got a long way to go.

In January 2010, White unemployment was 8.7%.  For African Americans, it was 16.5%.  For African American men, the percentage climbs to 17.6.

And scroll back to this summer.  White youth unemployment hovered around 25% but African American youth unemployment nudged 50%.  No matter what time boundaries you draw, African Americans are twice as likely to be unemployed as Whites.  The disparity is incredible.

But it wasn’t until stumbling into Roger Martin’s work at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management that I realized a huge part of why I haven’t felt the high unemployment levels in my peer group–even across race.  By his definition, we’re all in the creative class.  And even now, unemployment in the creative class is just crossing the 4% threshold.

Once you commit to naming your privilege, the list never ends.

Jonas

Pawlenty makes making sense a priority

I heard Republican Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty speak at a conference this week.  And, well, he was a great speaker.

He argued that we’re headed into a period of “radical decentralization” as technology threatens the aggregated power of centralized monopolies.   Because these monopolies tend to be sluggish, technological innovations are leapfroging them—institutions like higher education (versus online universities) and major newspapers (versus dispersed, real time news sources).  He also added “many current roles of government” to the list, though wasn’t as clear about what the decentralized alternative would look like—privatization, I’d imagine.

While I think there are many government functions that shouldn’t be privatized—prisons, detention centers, pre-collegiate education, and most overseas military operations, among others—it was a smart, compelling speech.

And it made me wonder why the hell conservatives are even looking at Palin when they’ve got someone like Pawlenty actually making sense.

Jonas