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From Economic Policy Institute:

As the nation prepares to commemorate Martin Luther King Day, the Economic Policy Institute warned that a national economic recession will result in disproportionately high unemployment rates for African Americans unless Congress enacts an emergency program to reduce joblessness and restore working people's purchasing power.

"When white America is in recession, black America is in an economic depression," declared Algernon Austin, director of EPI's Race, Ethnicity and the Economy program.

"The black unemployment rate is typically about double the white unemployment rate, and in the last two recessions, it rose faster than the overall unemployment rate.

This would be a social catastrophe as well as an economic calamity, with racial inequalities worsening, communities and families facing new stresses and strains, and the gains of recent decades eroding."

"What black America needs is what all of America needs: a stimulus package that will help average Americans and those with the most insecure jobs," Austin concluded.

The $140 billion program includes $40 billion in repairs on schools, bridges, highways, and environmental facilities; $30 billion in emergency assistance to state governments to avoid cutbacks in services and jobs and increases in taxes; and $5-10 billion for making jobless benefits available to the long-term unemployed.

For more information, see the new EPI Issue Brief, What a recession means for black America.

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