Boosting Economic Growth in Mississippi Through Employment Equity

Boosting Economic Growth in Mississippi through Employment Equity USC Program for Environmental & Regional Equity Alexandra Bastien and James Crowder Jr., with Justin Scoggins, Pamela Stephens, and Sarah Treuhaft May 2018 Preface Unemployed and low-income single parents need essential support systems like childcare and holistic case management While Mississippi’s economy is currently producing low so their efforts to obtain skills training and education are unemployment overall, more than one in five women live in realistic and more likely to lead them to a family-supporting poverty—the highest rate in the nation. Women of color career. While work supports like childcare make the difference continue to be significantly overrepresented in low-wage work in a woman’s ability to work or to participate in skills training and Black workers continue to experience higher unemployment or education, this approach by itself will not lift women out of rates, even when they have higher educational attainment. poverty. Women need skills training for jobs that pay living While women of color represent a disproportionately high share wages. Coupling childcare as a work support with higher- of Mississippi’s working poor, nearly 600,000 working-age paying career pathways is the kind of combination of services Mississippians are economically insecure. that Mississippi must place at the center of both its workforce and human services systems. Employment equity is essential to creating economic prosperity for all Mississippians. Achieving employment equity would While women need meaningful support systems and pathways mean that every Mississippian who wants to work can find a to higher earnings, they also need fairness in the workplace. good job that pays family-supporting wages. It also means that Women in Mississippi deserve equal pay. In Mississippi, Black women and people of color are not disproportionately women earn just 57 cents and Latina women earn 54 cents for unemployed or stuck in low-wage work. Employment equity in every dollar earned by a White man. Closing the gender pay Mississippi will require gender equity and racial equity in the gap is a critical component of achieving both gender and racial workforce and the key to unlocking Mississippi’s full economic equity in Mississippi’s economy. potential rests at the intersection of race and gender. Our research shows that women of color working full-time in Investing in women and in critical support systems for Mississippi’s economy are much more concentrated in low- Mississippi’s workforce will disrupt Mississippi’s current wage work (40 percent of women of color are working poor pattern of economic exclusion and place the state on a course versus 13 percent of White men). to greater prosperity for all. Employment equity would grow the state’s economy and meet employers’ increasing demand Women in Mississippi need a pathway to higher wages. More for a skilled workforce. Our research shows that if Mississippi than 200,000 households in Mississippi are headed by women, achieved “full employment” across all racial and gender groups, and 40 percent of these households are in poverty. As Mississippi’s economy would be $2.5 billion stronger each year, Mississippi workforce leaders implemented the Workforce 171,000 Mississippians would be brought into the state’s Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), the lack of affordable workforce, 47,000 fewer residents would live below poverty, childcare was identified as a major barrier to single mothers’ and annual tax revenue would grow by $559 million. If ability to obtain higher wages through additional training or employed women in Mississippi were paid the same as education and a barrier to their ability to enter the workforce. comparable men, their poverty rate would be reduced by half Childcare assistance for working parents reaches only a small and poverty among employed single mothers would drop by 1 fraction of those working-poor families who are eligible. The about one-third. limited reach of available supports leaves many working moms languishing in low-wage work or disconnected from Mississippi can only benefit from these gains by supporting a employment altogether. policy agenda that connects all Mississippians to good jobs. Specifically, Mississippi must invest in women and eliminate barriers that keep them excluded from economic opportunity. We welcome Mississippi’s policymakers to join us in pursuing the solutions proposed in this report. Carol Burnett Executive Director Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative Boosting Economic Growth in Mississippi through Employment Equity 2 Introduction Changing this situation and achieving employment equity— when everyone who wants to work has a good job that pays Chrissy Portman, a wife and mother of four in Biloxi, is a family-supporting wages and the lack of a good job cannot be certified construction worker and firefighter. Her husband is a predicted by race or gender—is crucial to Mississippi’s truck driver. In the summer of 2016, Chrissy had to leave her economic future. This is particularly true given the state’s construction job because her children were out of school and changing demographics. In 1980, 64 percent of the state’s the cost of childcare was too high, especially with four children population was White. Today, 51 percent of Mississippi’s youth all under the age of nine. She did not work for two months, and under age 18 are people of color and by 2050 the White 6 her husband’s salary as a truck driver was not enough to make population is projected to shrink to 50 percent. As the White ends meet. When she tried to reenter the job market, she was population slowly declines, communities of color are growing regularly turned away despite having 10 years’ experience. rapidly, especially Latino and Asian and Pacific Islander 7 communities. Women make up almost half of Mississippi’s Darla is a childcare provider in Jackson and most of her clients workforce, yet the state continues to have one of the largest are low-income parents enrolled in Mississippi’s childcare gender pay gaps in the nation. Mississippi women earn just 76 voucher program. Darla is currently facing the difficult decision cents for every dollar earned by men. Additionally, Mississippi of whether or not to close her doors because of the frequent has the highest rate of women living in poverty at 21 percent 8 changes in the state’s childcare payments system. Parents are compared to 13 percent nationally. regularly kicked off the program with little to no warning, leaving Darla in a constant cycle of scrambling to help families These demographic trends and gender disparities make get their vouchers reinstated while still serving them even employment equity an urgent imperative. Without a change in when they cannot pay. course, Mississippi’s economically insecure population will grow as the state becomes more diverse and the negative Chrissy and Darla are not alone. Many of Mississippi’s low- impacts of racial inequities will weigh more heavily on the income families and the businesses that serve them feel the state, both socially and financially. stress of increasing economic insecurity across the state. Nearly 600,000 working-age adults in Mississippi are This brief describes why employment equity is critical to economically insecure, defined as living below 200 percent of Mississippi’s economic future and lays out a policy roadmap to the federal poverty line, or about $41,000 for a family of three.2 achieve employment equity. It is based on data analysis and While economic insecurity is a widespread challenge for an modeling of a “full-employment economy” (defined as when increasing number of Mississippians, women and people of everyone who wants a job can find one), which was conducted color are disproportionately represented among the by the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) economically insecure. 3 at the University of Southern California, and on policy research and focus groups conducted by PolicyLink and the Mississippi Mississippi’s economically insecure working-age adults are Low-Income Child Care Initiative (MLICCI). Unless otherwise struggling to find good jobs: jobs that pay enough to support noted, data presented in this brief are from a PolicyLink/PERE a family, offer safe working conditions, and provide analysis of the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) 9 meaningful opportunities to move up the economic ladder. 2016 five-year American Community Survey. For more About 44 percent of these adults are out of the labor force— information on data and methodology, see http://plcylk. some have given up on finding work and others care for family org/2ApazHr. MLICCI provided insight on the research and is members, attend school, or have a disability that prevents now ready to take the lead on the recommendations pertaining them from working.4 Another 10 percent of economically to childcare and to advance the employment equity agenda insecure adults are actively looking for work, while the presented in this report. This is the third in a series of reports remaining 46 percent actually have jobs, but those jobs are about employment equity in southern states co-produced by low-wage, precarious jobs that do not pay enough to ensure PolicyLink, PERE, and local partners with support from the W.K. 10 economic security.5 Kellogg Foundation. Boosting Economic Growth in Mississippi through Employment Equity 3 Key Findings Mississippi Is Experiencing Minimal Economic Growth • Mississippi is experiencing minimal economic growth. Mississippi is at a moment of historically low unemployment, Mississippi has great economic potential, but falls short on yet the state has a tepid economic outlook. This is because critical measures of growth. Comparative analyses of state economic opportunity is reaching too few, leaving many on economic activity generally place Mississippi among the bottom the sidelines with jobs that do not pay enough to support five states.

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