Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Our Bloomberg News team
Speaker 1: out with a piece this week about how black mothers
Speaker 1: with young children are leaving the workforce at an alarming pace.
Speaker 1: Labor force participation carol among black mothers aged twenty five
Speaker 1: to fifty four with children under five. So it's a
Speaker 1: really important demographic piece. Twenty five to fifty four is
Speaker 1: the prime working age okay has fallen eleven and a
Speaker 1: half percentage points in just three months. It's dropped to
Speaker 1: its lowest level in over thirty years. This is according
Speaker 1: to analysis of BLS data by Lauren Bauer and Economic studies.
Speaker 1: Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Speaker 2: Back with us is Mark Moril. He is president and
Speaker 2: CEO of the civil rights and urban advocacy organization, the
Speaker 2: National Urban League. He joins us from New York. Mark,
Speaker 2: thank you so much, nice to have you. Thanks back
Speaker 2: on back on Bloomberg. You know we set up tim
Speaker 2: I just mentioned we were talking about labor force participation
Speaker 2: among black mothers. The piece continues to note that the
Speaker 2: decline is not simply part of a broader retreat among
Speaker 2: working mothers driven by return to office mandates and childcare pressures.
Speaker 2: White and Hispanic mothers have seen much smaller pullbacks. That
Speaker 2: suggests the reversal is particularly cute among Black mothers. It's
Speaker 2: a group of workers we know who are traditionally more
Speaker 2: likely to work than their peers. What is going on?
Speaker 2: Give us your view on this.
Speaker 3: One thing that's going on is that many of these
Speaker 3: Black women have been laid off from their jobs. The
Speaker 3: DOGE cuts, the attacks on diversity in corporate America have
Speaker 3: costs live literally over half a million, maybe three quarters
Speaker 3: of a million Black women their jobs. These are professional
Speaker 3: black women in many respects, so with college degrees and
Speaker 3: graduate degrees. And that impact is exacerbated by the fact
Speaker 3: that childcare is exceedingly expensive and difficult. So mothers, if
Speaker 3: you do not have a job, you may have to
Speaker 3: retreat from the workforce and stop looking for work for
Speaker 3: a period of time. And I think that is what
Speaker 3: is going on. It is difficult out here. I mean,
Speaker 3: I mean these numbers. I can say anecdotally, I run
Speaker 3: into so many Black women who have never known unemployment
Speaker 3: who are now out of work. And these are hot,
Speaker 3: excuse me, highly educated, college educated black women.
Speaker 4: This is what's going on.
Speaker 3: Look at this job's report, we've got a loss of jobs,
Speaker 3: and then we've got a black unemployment rate at six
Speaker 3: point three percent, where two years ago it was four
Speaker 3: point three percent.
Speaker 4: So things are deteriorating. It's tough out here, it's difficult.
Speaker 1: Mark. What is what is notable about this is you
Speaker 1: know this this report that that we're getting from our
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News team. This this came out yesterday. Okay, we
Speaker 1: get additional data about the workforce today, as we do
Speaker 1: every single month with the payrolls report. But last week,
Speaker 1: or I should say last month, just at the end
Speaker 1: of last month, you and the team at the National
Speaker 1: Urban League came out with a stark warning essentially that
Speaker 1: says the American dream may not be dead for many
Speaker 1: Black Americans, but it's further away than at any point
Speaker 1: since the Civil rights movement. How does the data that
Speaker 1: Carol and I were talking about fit into what you
Speaker 1: found big picture about where we are since the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement?
Speaker 3: I think it supports the fact that in the last
Speaker 3: eighteen months we've seen a deterioration and it's been an
Speaker 3: attack on many of the structures, the Civil Rights Act,
Speaker 3: the EEOC, the commitment by the government to lead when
Speaker 3: it comes to diversity and all of the retreats and
Speaker 3: all of the retrenchments. And when we talk to people
Speaker 3: in the community, and this is black people, but I
Speaker 3: would say even beyond they say the American dream is
Speaker 3: beyond my reach. The idea of a stable job that
Speaker 3: pays and allows me to prepare for retirement, that I
Speaker 3: can own, a home that I can afford, take care
Speaker 3: of health care, take care of my parents, take care
Speaker 3: of my children. We are dealing with what the American
Speaker 3: people are saying. With Black Americans are saying that the
Speaker 3: American dream is beyond reach. We have to restore, revive,
Speaker 3: refine the American dream, which is why our State of
Speaker 3: Black American Board includes a five to six point affordability agenda.
Speaker 3: My premise is that America's priorities are misplaced. The misplacement
Speaker 3: is that this focus on wars two billion dollars a
Speaker 3: day in Iraq and the depletion of our missile stock
Speaker 3: stock piles a fiscal plan, which is all the Big
Speaker 3: Ugly Bill is called.
Speaker 4: I call it the Big Ugly bill.
Speaker 3: That shifts resources significantly away from middle class Americans, working
Speaker 3: class Americans, aspiring middle class Americans, and vulnerable Americans to
Speaker 3: the richest billionaires in America, just one thousand people. And
Speaker 3: the American people on the right, the middle, and the
Speaker 3: left are not pleased with the direction of the country
Speaker 3: and the priorities of the country. So this board speaks
Speaker 3: to Black America, but I think it speaks much more
Speaker 3: broadly to all of the American people.
Speaker 2: Mark, do you want to grab some water? We don't
Speaker 2: know if you need to get a little bit of water.
Speaker 2: Are you okay?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to work through this. Yeah, I've been
Speaker 3: I had a little hiccup attack.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, we've all been there.
Speaker 4: Mark, that's right.
Speaker 2: We've also had coffee attacks on air. So that's fine
Speaker 2: as long as you're okay. We were just want to make.
Speaker 1: Sure to be fair. Marcus spent you know, his lifetime
Speaker 1: speaking in front of large groups as a former mayor
Speaker 1: of New Orleans from nineteen ninety four to two thousand
Speaker 1: and two. He was the city's youngest mayor. He has
Speaker 1: was a Louisiana State senator too in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we've all been there, Mark.
Speaker 2: We have definitely been there for your indulgent Mark. You know,
Speaker 2: one of the things we think about we talk about
Speaker 2: a lot. I mean, the first date of Black America
Speaker 2: was published in seventy six. It's a long time ago, right,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of years. There's a lot has happened,
Speaker 2: you know, and I am amazed at some things have
Speaker 2: certainly gotten better, but we still have some really tough
Speaker 2: situations for segments of our population, for segments of what
Speaker 2: is America. And I don't know if we're making progress anymore.
Speaker 2: When you look at policies that are out there, what
Speaker 2: could we do better?
Speaker 3: One thing we can do better is focused on income,
Speaker 3: the earnings of people. The fact that we haven't had
Speaker 3: a comprehensive national minimum wage bill since two thousand and
Speaker 3: seven is tragic. Even though we've been through economy up
Speaker 3: excuse me ups and downs.
Speaker 4: We need a national living wage bill.
Speaker 3: We've got to recognize that too many people are working
Speaker 3: hard everyday day, they work sometimes two jobs, but they
Speaker 3: still can't make ends meet.
Speaker 4: So we've got to work on income.
Speaker 3: We've also got to work on what is driving the
Speaker 3: affordability crisis, and that is housing. The cost of housing.
Speaker 3: The cost of housing has increased five times faster than incomes.
Speaker 3: Think about that since the year two thousand there are
Speaker 3: many reasons for it.
Speaker 4: We need to build.
Speaker 3: We need an aggressive, an aggressive initiative in this country
Speaker 3: to build more affordable housing. And I think we ought
Speaker 3: to take the housing voucher program, which has worked for many,
Speaker 3: many years, and expand the eligibility. It's sometimes called the
Speaker 3: Section A program. We could do it with the exact
Speaker 3: same amount of money we're spending on your animal.
Speaker 4: That is the point. It's an issue of priorities. What
Speaker 4: are we prioritizing in America?
Speaker 3: Are we prioritizing affordability, are we prioritizing inclusion, or are
Speaker 3: we prioritizing destruction? You know, we're prioritizing the transfer of
Speaker 3: wealth to the highest and most successful Americans. And look,
Speaker 3: I'm not a billionaire basher, that's not the point. I
Speaker 3: just think billionaires shouldn't get any special breaks, no special privileges.
Speaker 3: I think they ought to pay the same taxes as
Speaker 3: a you know, as a reporter or an anchor, or
Speaker 3: a nurse, or a firefighter, or a teacher or a
Speaker 3: service worker. I think that is the fundamental principle of
Speaker 3: fairness in America.
Speaker 1: But Mark, I want to dig into this housing part
Speaker 1: of the conversation. We talk about this a lot, and
Speaker 1: there's there's certainly no clear, easy answer to this, and
Speaker 1: that's why I'm interested in what you have to say.
Speaker 1: You worked, you were in local politics as as mayor
Speaker 1: of New Orleans, you're a state senator. You have a
Speaker 1: national position. Now it's not a political position, but it's
Speaker 1: a national advocacy organization. Doesn't this have Doesn't the housing
Speaker 1: issue have to have to start the local level because
Speaker 1: so much of this is about you know where exactly
Speaker 1: a home.
Speaker 3: There can be no doubt that the local level is
Speaker 3: important that. I think cities and mayors all across America.
Speaker 3: I mean even in New York You've seem a whole
Speaker 3: series of mayors here do what they can with the
Speaker 3: resources that they have.
Speaker 4: This is a resource problem. Here's why.
Speaker 3: The housing market, the building of affordable housing slow now
Speaker 3: with nine eleven and it never bounce back. So all
Speaker 3: estimates are that we're fortified million units short. This takes
Speaker 3: a big play in the early twentieth century. In the
Speaker 3: middle twentieth century, when we had a housing crisis in America,
Speaker 3: the federal government stepped in and produced tools.
Speaker 4: Those tools were Faha, Fanny May Freddie Mack.
Speaker 3: Later on in the nineteen seventies, the Community Reinvestment Act,
Speaker 3: a series of tools that helped to leverage private sector
Speaker 3: funding public money with state and local action.
Speaker 4: It was enormously successful. We've got to get.
Speaker 3: Back to this idea that it is not the FEDS
Speaker 3: versus the state, state versus the city, not the public
Speaker 3: sector versus the private sector, but a combination of all
Speaker 3: of these factors to deal with one of America's great crisis.
Speaker 3: The cost of gas is hurting Americans. I would say
Speaker 3: that the cost of housing is really hurting Americans, young
Speaker 3: and old, black and white. It's more exacerbated for black
Speaker 3: and brown communities, but it is not limited to black
Speaker 3: and brown communities. Well, we face and so yes local action,
Speaker 3: but it's a combination because the problem is so massive.
Speaker 3: Four to five million housing units underwater in the country.
Speaker 3: Too many Americans paying up to fifty percent plus of
Speaker 3: their take home income for rents and mortgages.
Speaker 4: This is not sustainable if we are.
Speaker 3: Going to revive, reform and resuscitate the American dream.
Speaker 2: You know, we think so much too. We talk a
Speaker 2: lot about the Investment Office audience, and you know, we
Speaker 2: have to remind everybody that not everybody's in the stock market,
Speaker 2: and there are two, three or four different Americas, and
Speaker 2: it does feel like we're at a point in time
Speaker 2: where we've really forgotten so many members of our population
Speaker 2: and what makes up America. Do you have hope going
Speaker 2: forward for Black Americans and those that are forgotten.
Speaker 3: I'm an eternal optimists, but I do think people are
Speaker 3: going to have to send a message in these midterms
Speaker 3: to rebalance the conversation because the premise here is what
Speaker 3: are America's priorities. I believe that America's priority should always
Speaker 3: be centered around domestic tranquility, domestic economic growth, inclusionary economic growth.
Speaker 3: And I think when we do that as a nation,
Speaker 3: the public sector and the private sector thrive. The private
Speaker 3: sector and the stock market thrive. Remember, two thirds to
Speaker 3: three fourths of the America economy is driven by consumer spending.
Speaker 3: People have money in their pocket to spend. This is
Speaker 3: why I'm such a proponent of wage increases and such
Speaker 3: a proponent of increasing the minimum wage. It's going to
Speaker 3: benefit the overall economy. And we have to embrace a
Speaker 3: if you will, if you will, a a a if
Speaker 3: you will A philosophy of public private partnerships at the
Speaker 3: national level. We have to embrace the philosophy of the states,
Speaker 3: working with the Feds, working with local government in order
Speaker 3: to accomplish these big things. I think I see mayors
Speaker 3: all across the country. I know we're active in the
Speaker 3: housing market. We helped two thousand people become homeowners for
Speaker 3: the first time last year. We could do four thousand,
Speaker 3: We could do five thousand if there was a housing
Speaker 3: supply and an increase in the number of twos. When
Speaker 3: I was Mayor of New Orleans, I put a big, big,
Speaker 3: big push on this, but I had Fannie May, Freddie Mac,
Speaker 3: the banks, community based lenders, the Clinton administration all partnering
Speaker 3: with us, and we increase significantly the number of housing
Speaker 3: units and the significant number of affordable housing units in
Speaker 3: the city, not only for rent, but also for home ownership.
Speaker 2: Mark, we know there's so much to go through, and
Speaker 2: we do hope you will afford us some time in
Speaker 2: the future again so we could continue this conversation, especially
Speaker 2: as you mentioned with you guys, we would love that.
Speaker 2: We would love that go get some water. Hopefully the
Speaker 2: hiccups are over. We've all been there. We've all been there. Mark, staywell,
Speaker 2: have a good weekend Mark Moriol. He's president CEO of
Speaker 2: the civil rights and urban advocacy organization. Of course it
Speaker 2: is the National Urban League joining us as we appreciate
Speaker 2: his time on this Friday