With Jobs Scarce, Black College Students Start Their Own Businesses
Life + Money

With Jobs Scarce, Black College Students Start Their Own Businesses

Michelle Hirsch, The Fiscal Times

When he was still in high school, Lawrence Elliott Ball launched a Web development and graphic design company called Meshu Creative Services. He went on to Howard University where he entered the Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and Innovation Institute’s (ELI) annual business competition and won $4,500 — enough seed money to start a business card printing service aimed at college students. Ball’s businesses have allowed him to pay his full tuition at Howard University, where he is a senior working toward a bachelor’s degree in business.

His advisers call him a business prodigy and self-motivator, a good thing for Ball amid one of the worst recessions in U.S. history. College graduates, especially African-Americans, are facing grim employment prospects, and some are starting their own businesses rather than counting on landing a job.  Unemployment among African-Americans with four-year college degrees is 8.2 percent, nearly twice the 4.5 percent for whites. In the last three years, the unemployment rate for college-educated blacks increased 263 percent, compared to 150 percent for their white counterparts, according to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee

The disparity has led black leaders and civil rights activists to call for more direct federal help for minorities, but Congress and the White House have so far rejected large or targeted aid as they hammer out a jobs agenda. “Those jobs bills are excellent steps in the right direction,” said National Urban League president Marc Morial in a press conference last month unveiling the organization’s “State of Black America” report. “But this team doesn’t need a bunt; this team needs a home run. This team doesn’t need a field goal, this team needs a touchdown.”

As Congress contemplates additional action to try to spur the economy, President Obama, the first African-American to lead the nation, has rejected pleas for measures that would directly benefit black Americans. “What I can do is make sure that I am passing laws that help all people, particularly those who are most vulnerable and most in need. That, in turn, is going to help lift up the African-American community,” Obama told American Urban Radio Networks in December 2009.  

Obama’s viewpoint is shared by Ethan Pollack, a policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington D.C.

“Any job package that fortifies the overall economy is going to disproportionately benefit minority communities,” Pollack said.  “Black unemployment tends to be about twice that of white unemployment, so a 1 point jump in white unemployment is a 2 point jump for black unemployment but it also means that recovery measures are disproportionally good for blacks,” Pollack said.    

The class of 2010 may be facing a dismal job market, but they’re not giving up. Johnetta Boseman Hardy, executive director of Howard’s ELI Institute, said her students are taking a more creative approach. “The recession is the perfect time for anybody to start a business,” she said. “Out of nothing has to come something. We are teaching our students how to use their ideas to either go out on their own or further themselves in an organization.”

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