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As always, nonwhites have suffered the most from the recession. Herbert Hill, who is in charge of labor affairs at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, says that unemployment among the black population in some major cities is approaching 30% or even 40%. Says Hill: "For the black community, this is a full-scale depression. Many of the gains that we have made over the past ten years are being rapidly eroded." At the same time, community-action-program funds are drying up.
Los Angeles Poverty Worker Roland Atkins, 33, has a familiar complaint: "Every time I apply for a job in a community agency these days—and I apply for everything—I'm competing with Ph.D.s and people with master's degrees. Ph.D.s will work for $500 a month, money they wouldn't look at before. Now, the man on the bottom has to compete with people with lots more education, and he's getting knocked out of the higher paying jobs."
Almost every community has its own local indicators of the breadth of the nation's economic malaise. San Francisco has decided to open its municipal library on Sundays. Reason: it is being used more heavily than at any tune since the '40s, because it offers a form of free education. Salvation Army officials in Houston observe that the annual influx of drifters migrating from northern cities has begun much earlier than usual this year. The army's 224-bed Harbor Light Center, which normally has vacancies well into the winter, is already filled to capacity.
Meanwhile, Houston Pawnbroker Jimmy Kilpatrick finds that "middle-class people are coming into my shop in droves — at least triple the number of last year. We've had an influx of wealthier people who have been cleaning out safe-deposit boxes and selling the diamonds and jewelry."
As is usually the case during hard economic times, crime is on the increase.
In Georgia, robbery convictions have risen 25% in the past ten months, and prisons are so crowded that Governor Jimmy Carter has ordered a step-up in an early-release program for old cons to make room for new arrivals.
So Bleak. Anomalies abound, how ever. Transatlantic air travel is off about 15% this year, but seats are hard to find on crowded flights to Hawaii, Mexico and the Caribbean. In Southern California, autoborne tourism is off 8%, and Disneyland is receiving 4% fewer visitors, but affluent Californians have not had their wings clipped. Says Westwood Travel Agent Analee Yorkshire, "They're still bringing kids home from school back East to go to Yucatan or Guatemala for a week. If you have it, you have it." Miami hotelmen speak un happily of a "season of bargain hunters," with fewer big spenders and more church and union groups on package tours, but bookings at ski centers in Colorado and Utah are up as much as 30% this year. The tables and nightclubs along the Strip in Las Vegas are still crowded, but Madam Beverly Harrell complains that some 25% fewer customers have been making their way north to her nearby Cottontail Ranch. "Keep in mind that the bordello is at the bottom of the list," she says philosophically.
"Food and rent come first."