(NNPA)—“The hardest work in the world is being out of work.”—Whitney M. Young, National Urban League President 1961-1971
One of the advantages of my position as the president and CEO of the National Urban League is that I have both the opportunity and platform to speak to so many of our nation’s young people. I was presented with another opportunity last week as a featured speaker of the Medgar Evers College Global Lecture Series. As I addressed that crowd of future lawyers, IT professionals and perhaps even a president of the National Urban League, it struck me that for a number of these students—our future workforce—they may encounter an America, and a job market, that is hostile to the principles of economic mobility on which our country was founded.
Five years after the widely-accepted end of the global economic downturn commonly known as the Great Recession, America’s economy inches ever closer to full recovery. In fact, the start of 2015 saw the most sustained period of job creation this century. But the dark cloud inside this silver lining is that too many people are still being left behind—particularly in our communities of color, where unemployment remains at a crisis level, even as our economy continues to rebound.
