African Americans represented a 31.9 percent share of Georgia’s labor force in 2020, one of only four states and the District of Columbia, where African Americans’ share of the labor market exceeded thirty percent, according to newly released data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The other states included Mississippi (35.5 percent),
Maryland (31.5 percent), and Louisiana (31.0 percent). In the District of
Columbia, African Americans comprised 35.0 percent of the labor force. By
comparison, African Americans accounted for 12.6 percent of the U.S. labor
force. BLS defines labor force as the sum of the number of employed and
unemployed persons in a labor market.
African Americans employment by industry for the United States in 2020
BLS does not provide a current breakout by race for the number of people employed by detailed industries in Georgia, but in a separate report, BLS has published the number of people employed by detailed industry and race for the nation.
Nationally, African Americans accounted for 12.1 percent of all employed workers in 2020, but these percentages vary considerably by industry from zero percent to more than 33 percent.
Industries with a workforce that includes a much higher-than-average share of
African American workers in 2020 include:
- Bus service and urban transit (33.4%)
- Psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals (30.6%)
- Home health care services (28.8%)
- Investigation and security services (28.4%)
- Barber shops (28.0%)
- Nursing care facilities (skilled nursing facilities) (27.7%)
- Community food and housing, and emergency services (social assistance) (27.3%)
- Taxi and limousine service (27.1%)
- Postal Service (24.8%)
- Couriers and messengers (23.9%)
- Warehousing and storage (23.5%)
- Administration of human resource programs (public administration) (22.8%)
- Residential care facilities, except skilled nursing facilities (21.7%)
- Individual and family services (social assistance) (20.6%)
- General merchandise stores, including warehouse clubs and supercenters (20.3%)
- Business support services (20.1%)
- Animal slaughtering and processing (20.0%)
Industries with a workforce that includes a fewer-than-three-percent share of African
American workers in 2020 include:
- Machinery, equipment, and supplies merchant wholesalers (2.8%)
- Crop production (2.8%)
- Farm product raw material merchant wholesalers (1.8%)
- Alcoholic beverages merchant wholesalers (1.8%)
- Electronic and precision equipment repair and maintenance (1.7%)
- Fuel dealers (retail) (1.6%)
- Miscellaneous durable goods merchant wholesalers (1.3%)
- Metalworking machinery manufacturing (1.2%)
- Coating, engraving, heat treating, and allied activities (1.0%)
- Lawn and garden equipment and supplies stores (1.0%)
- Other than automobile motor vehicle dealers (0.9%)
- Nonmetallic mineral mining and quarrying (0.8%)
- Software publishers (0.4%)
- Forestry, except logging (0.0%)
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Economics Daily, Four states and D.C. had labor force that was more than 30 percent African American in 2020 at https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/four-states-and-dc-had-labor-force-that-was-more-than-30-percent-african-american-in-2020.htm (visited February 20, 2021).
Labor force statistics from the Current Population Survey:
Employed persons by detailed industry, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino
ethnicity at Employed persons by
detailed industry, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity (bls.gov) (visited
February 20, 2021).
