(Bloomberg) -- Makayla Adams is living in the middle of an economic boom in South Florida. To her, it doesn’t always feel that way.
The guard at Port Everglades in Broward County was able to log close to 70 hours a week during the busy 2022 winter season for cruises, boosting her weekly pay to about $900 from roughly $500.
And even though the county raised her hourly wage to $17 from $15 in January, her expenses — rent, child care, a car payment and car insurance — leave her with little disposable income.
“With that all getting paid on time, I have nothing to accommodate myself or my daughter,” said Adams, 22. “I’m taking care of my responsibilities, but it’s like I have no freedom.”
On paper, South Florida’s labor market has been great for Black workers like Adams. Miami has become the economic envy of cities around the US. That translated into what was record-low
unemployment earlier this year for Black workers in the region, which includes Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, according to an analysis of government survey data. The unemployment
rate for that demographic reached 5.1% between March 2023 and May 2023 — still one of the lowest among major US metro areas.
In reality, people of color are not benefitting equitably from the area’s boom. And they are also most vulnerable as the labor market cools, with Black workers accounting for 90% of the recent
increase in unemployment across the country.
Much of the demand for labor in South Florida has been in leisure, hospitality and retail, where workers earning low wages are having a harder time keeping up with record rent growth and other
rising costs. People of color in the region are almost three times as likely as their White counterparts to experience working poverty, which is when a family’s income is below 200% of the federal
poverty level despite working full time, according to the National Equity Atlas, an online tool that tracks data on racial and economic inequities. That amounted to $39,440 in 2023 for a family of
two, according to guidelines from the Department of Health and Human Services.
“What does it mean that there’s this kind of strong economic growth that we’ve seen?” said Abbie Langston, director of equitable economy at PolicyLink, a research institute based in Oakland,
California. “It’s not that that’s bad news, but it’s not necessarily the full picture.”
While nearly 70% of South Florida’s workforce between the ages of 25 and 64 is Black or Hispanic, they are are overrepresented in jobs that tend to pay lower wages or offer fewer benefits, according
to research co-authored by Langston and published in January by Florida International University in partnership with the National Equity Atlas and Lightcast with support from JPMorgan Chase.
The research also found that racial pay gaps persisted, even for Black workers with higher levels of education. White workers in the Miami area with a bachelor’s degree or higher earned a median
wage of $32 an hour as of 2018, compared to $23 for their Black counterparts and $24 for Hispanic workers, the report found. The disparity is even worse among Black and Hispanic immigrant
workers, only half of whom earn at least $15 per hour, compared to 80% of White workers.
It’s all compounded by soaring rents in the city, which saw an influx of new residents thanks to a pandemic migration and an influx of companies from finance to tech. Miami is now the fourth most expensive city in the nation to rent a one-bedroom apartment following a 59% increase in rents since the pandemic, according to Zumper, a rental marketplace. That rent growth trounces the 23% rise in national median rents.
Miami and nearby Hialeah had the highest rates of rent burden among the largest 100 metros in the US, with 64% of households and 67% of households respectively spending more than 30% of their income on housing, according to PolicyLink. In Miami, 68% of Black households are likely to be rent-burdened, followed by Hispanic renters at 65%. That compares to 54% of White renters who are rent-burdened.
