Restoring Economic Security to African American Families: Businesses have added over 14 million jobs over 70 straight months of job growth, the longest streak on record. While we still have more to do, this job growth has helped cut the African American unemployment rate in half – from 16.8% in March 2010 to 8.3% in December 2015, its lowest level since September 2007. The African-American unemployment rate has fallen by more than the overall unemployment rate in the past few years, and is further below its pre-recession level than any other racial or ethnic group.
Permanent Tax Cuts that Promote Work and Reduce Poverty: The President established and recently made permanent significant improvements to tax credits for working families. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) were expanded to encourage work and help low-income parents afford the costs of raising a family, together providing about 16 million families a year with a tax cut averaging $900. Because of these improvements, a single parent working full-time, year-round at the federal minimum wage gets an additional CTC of more than $1,700; if the expansion were not in place, that parent would not receive any CTC.
Making College More Accessible and Affordable: The President signed legislation increasing the maximum Pell Grant by more than $1,000 and total Pell Grant funding by 70%, helping millions of low- and moderate-income students afford college every year. He’s also taken steps to reduce student loan burdens, including ending student loan subsidies for private banks and shifting the savings back to students, reducing student loan interest rates to historic lows, and capping student loan payments at 10% of income for all students. The President also established and made permanent the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which provides a tax cut of up to $10,000 over four years for nearly 10 million working and middle-class families a year paying for college.
Getting more Americans into Better, Higher Paying Jobs: Last July, the Administration released a plan for job-training and employment programs to be more responsive to the needs of employers in order to effectively place ready-to-work Americans in jobs that are available now or train them in the skills needed for better jobs. Since then the government has awarded over 15 competitive job-training grants that total over $1.2 billion. Some of the biggest competitive grant program are targeted towards expanding proven, job-driven strategies, including $175 million into expanding apprenticeship programs. To go along with the apprenticeship program, the Department of Labor has also proposed a rule to increase equal employment opportunity in apprenticeship programs for traditionally under-represented groups.
Helping the Long-Term Unemployed Get Back to Work: The Administration has taken steps to help more of the long-term unemployed get back to work, around one-quarter of whom are African-American. The Department of Labor awarded nearly $170 million in “Ready to Work Partnership” grants to support the best models for partnerships between employers, non-profits, and the job training system to help train and connect the long-term unemployed to work.
Rebuilding Transportation Infrastructure, Rejuvenating the American Workforce: In December, President Obama signed the long-term transportation bill, the first passed by Congress in 10 years. Transportation accounts for 11 million jobs, and transportation-related employment accounted for about 8.7% of civilian workers in the United States. In 2008, African Americans comprised only 6% of the industry, and women comprised only 3%. Every $1 billion invested in infrastructure supports more than 10,000 jobs and that is why this administration launched the new one-year pilot program, Local Hire. As a result, Federal Highway Administration’s On-the-Job Training (OJT) Program requires State DOTs to make full use of apprenticeship and training programs targeted to develop the skills of women, minorities, and disadvantaged individuals to ensure that a competent workforce is available to meet highway construction hiring needs.