Southern Generosity Isn’t Extended to all Southerners

“The American system of unemployment insurance is a remnant of Jim Crow.” – Colin Gordon, American history professor, University of Iowa

The Southern region of the United States is home to 58 percent of the country’s Black population. It’s also home to 8 out of the 10 states with the stingiest and least supportive UI systems.

The list includes: Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida—which together make up 8 of the 10 states with the highest percentage of Black residents. Florida is home to the second-largest Black population in the country (after Texas). All of these Southern states, once home to the Confederacy, have histories deeply rooted in racism and inequity that still persist today. They’re among the poorest states in the country, with many having the highest poverty rates in the U.S. (Mississippi ranks at the top of that list). Florida has the 3rd largest Latinx population in the country and, according to Pew, between 2010 and 2019, the Latinx population in the South increased by 26 percent—growing faster than any other region in the United States.

Among “the 10 states where fewer than 15 percent of unemployed people received benefits in March, seven were in the South.” That rate is just below half the national average and further highlights the disparity in UI benefits and recipiency across the country. Where you live and work impacts the benefits you will receive—and the South is not known for its generosity when it comes to unemployment insurance.

Since 2009, the region has contended with the slowest economic and wage growth; unemployment and poverty rates remain high across the region. “Southerners are particularly vulnerable because our public systems are not great,” said Sarah Beth Gehl, research director of The Southern Economic Advancement Project (SEAP). Communities of color—especially African Americans—are “concentrated in the South; so, not lifting this region up means inequities will worsen. This moment will exacerbate large inequities in wealth and well-being that have been experienced for hundreds of years.”

Gehl and many of the experts we spoke with emphasized the South’s restrictive UI eligibility and lack of support for workers of color in the region. They also noted that a lack of investment in the South would make it difficult to recover from this recession, negatively impacting the regional and national economy.

The Rural South: The Enduring Legacy of Slavery and Jim Crow

People often conflate “rural America” with “white America” and, in doing so, erase the experiences and needs of people of color living in those communities. In actuality, rural America is increasingly diverse, and home to large numbers of Latinx, Native American, and Black populations. And while systemic racism hurts Black communities across the country, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws have had a lasting and negative impact on the economic well-being of the Black rural south. In fact, Opportunity Insights found that, in general, while youth from rural areas had a better chance of achieving upward mobility than their urban counterparts, the same was not true in the South—where youth in rural communities had fewer opportunities for upward mobility than in urban centers.

“We need to make deep investments into the people who live here,” said Jessica Fulton from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. In February, they released “An Introduction to the Future of Work in the Black Rural South,” which comprises 156 counties designated as rural by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and having populations that are at least 35 percent African American. Key findings from the report highlight the risk of job displacement due to automation by 2030 and fewer new jobs being created. In fact, they estimate that the Black Rural South will see negative 9 percent job growth over the next decade.

Job displacement and a decline in new jobs, combined with a recession and global pandemic, spell disaster if the government fails to intervene and provide support to economically vulnerable workers and families. And while UI and other government programs have been a lifeline for people who have lost work, benefit amounts in the South are insufficient in covering workers’ lost wages.

Among those who received unemployment benefits in 2018, many southern states covered less than 40 percent of lost wages. Louisiana, for instance, covered only 36 percent of lost wages; compared with Iowa, which covers about 53 percent in lost wages.

Many states chose to lower payroll taxes for businesses at the expense of building a safety net for their constituents. This is especially true for the key states that comprise the Black rural south—Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, and Louisiana—all which offer less than $275 a week in maximum benefits. Kentucky is among the most generous in benefit amount, offering $552 a week; but the state cut the duration of benefits to 16 weeks—10 weeks less than the national norm of 26 weeks—before the pandemic. Duration of benefits matters: a year ago, during a period of record low unemployment, the average duration of unemployment was about 21 weeks. For Black workers during this same timeframe, unemployment averaged 25.9 weeks—lasting 5 weeks longer than the national average.

“Wages and unemployment have stagnated for decades,” said Michele Evermore from NELP. “Many workers cannot live on the wages they are making, much less on an unemployment benefit that is a small fraction of their regular wages.”

If Southern states don’t step up for their residents, then the federal government should. Mandating a minimum 26-week duration for unemployment benefits and setting benefit minimums would go a long way in protecting Black and Latinx workers in the South and making sure they have the support they need to weather periods of job instability and financial insecurity. The government should ensure that UI benefits cover a greater percentage of workers' wages and that eligibility requirements are not designed to disadvantage vulnerable workers and keep them from receiving benefits to which they are entitled.

Still, these patterns of racism must be faced head-on and rooted out within the system to ensure the equity that workers of color deserve. The South, and especially the Black rural south, for too long have been haunted by the spectre of slavery and Jim Crow. Building ways for Black and Latinx southerners to thrive economically is one step toward reconciling the past with a more equitable future.