Metropolitan Tulsa Urban League

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Education and Youth Economic Development Health & Quality of Life Civic Engagement

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Overall national trends often mask what has happened locally, especially in diverse, urban municipalities. This
is most evident when you look at employment trends. According to the US Census, the National unemployment rate is 4.0%, Gowever, the unemployment rate for Tulsa County was 4.8% with 17 of 18 census tracts in MTULs service area have an unemployment rate greater than 7%. Ten of those census tracts have an unemployment rate over 10%. This high unemployment rate can be seen in the number of Tulsa’s African Americans living below poverty. According to the US Census, 29% of Tulsa’s African Americans live below the poverty line (2000).

The affinity of minority businesses for hiring and investing in minority employees, as well as supporting other minority-owned enterprises, gives testimony to the direct link between the success of minority businesses
and the empowerment of the African-American, Native American and Hispanic communities. These firms allow
for the transfer of knowledge, wealth, and human capital to the community. It is therefore, disheartening to find that only 8% of all businesses in Tulsa County, defined as being minority owned, are actually owned by African Americans. Fifty-three percent of the minority businesses in Tulsa are defined as minority businesses because they are owned by women and only 37% are owned by women who are also racial or ethnic minorities.

Along with access to high quality, high paying employment, homeownership provides a foundation for financial security and is an important engine for wealth accumulation. The African-American homeownership rate, both absolutely and as a percentage of the white homeownership rate, was lower in 2006 (41.1%) than it was in 2005 (42.3%), according to Fannie Mae and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Tulsa Field Policy office.