The Chicago Reporter’s Alden Loury compiles data from the 2008 American Community Survey (a less thorough yearly version of the U.S. Census) and finds this: the collective unemployment rate for the Chicago South Side neighborhoods of Auburn Gresham, Englewood, Washington Heights and West Englewood is 23.2 percent. These four neighborhoods — defined as one community area by ACS — has the 2nd highest unemployment rate of any community in the country. The highest is a northeast corner of Detroit, which has an unemployment rate of a stunning 28.5 percent. In fact, Detroit has four of the ten community areas with the highest unemployment rates in the country.

What the ACS data shows (other than that Detroit could use the civilian surge we’re deploying in Afghanistan) is that the new economic crisis has made more severe an old problem: concentrated inner-city poverty.  All ten community areas with the largest unemployment are in inner-city communities (besides two neighborhoods in Chicago and four in Detroit there are neighborhoods from Cleveland, Toledo, St. Louis and Atlanta). These are neighborhoods that are not only getting killed by this recession – they still haven’t recovered from the last one.

Comment RSS - You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.