ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 3, 1993                   TAG: 9310070418
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: F4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: NANCY RYAN CHICAGO TRIBUNE
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                 LENGTH: Medium


BLACK GRADS EARNING LESS THAN WHITES

Despite a steady increase in college-bound blacks and corporate America's growing lip service to diversity, black college graduates who work full-time earned only 82 percent of the amount paid to comparable whites, according to a recent U.S. Census report.

That percentage, based on 1991 salaries, has not changed since 1979, according to the census report on black earnings.

The study compared the median income of year-round, full-time black and white workers aged 25 and older, who had at least a bachelor's degree.

The study's most striking finding showed that African-American workers who fit those criteria earned a median income of $30,910 - $6,580 less than whites in the same position brought home.

This despite the fact that the number of black men older than 25 who had finished college rose to 11.9 percent last year from 7.7 percent in 1980.

The portion of black women older than 25 who had earned a bachelor's degree rose to 12 percent from 8.1 percent in that period.

As a general rule, increasing the pool of college-educated individuals within a group raises the probability of higher earnings, said Claudette Bennett, the census statistician who wrote the report.

That apparently hasn't been the case for blacks, and economists and policymakers are still struggling to come up with explanations for what happened in the 1980s.

Bennett cited such possible factors as differences in age and regional concentrations among whites and blacks, and several economists named discrimination as the culprit.

But William Gray, president of the United Negro College Fund, was more blunt. ``I have a one-word answer for why this gap exists: racism,'' Gray said. ``It's a gap that cannot be attributable to anything other than race.''

According to the report, the gap in 1991 was even wider for black men. In 1991, they made $34,340 - 79 percent of the $43,690 earned by white men. Black women that same year made $28,130, or 92 percent of the $30,520 income of white women.

The largest disparity was between black and white men in sales, with African-American men drawing a median income of $24,910, or 60 percent of the $41,490 paid to white men. The smallest gap was found among professional women, with blacks earning 98.2 percent of the median white income of $31,580.

In executive, administrative and managerial positions, black men earned 77 percent of white males' income, and black women made 90 percent of white women's earnings.

Bennett speculated that age could partly explain the gap, because the college-educated white work force, especially among men, is older than blacks with degrees - and older, more-experienced workers generally earn more money. That large concentrations of blacks live in the South, where earnings in general tend to be lower, also could have played a role in the differences, she said.

Other studies on the earnings of college-educated African-Americans have turned up other disturbing results.

When the real hourly wages of all college graduates - not just those with year-round, full-time jobs - are compared, the gap between blacks and whites has widened significantly since 1979, said William Rodgers, an assistant professor of economics at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

Rodgers compared the wages of black and white male college graduates who had been in the labor market for less than 10 years from 1979 to 1989. In 1979, the disparity was negligible but gradually grew to almost 20 percent 10 years later, he said.

``It seems that such issues as discrimination, weakening affirmative action and increasing job requirements'' are responsible, Rodgers said. ``These are places researchers are looking at. But there's no conclusive evidence as to what's going on.''



 by CNB