African-Americans Especially Reliant on Internet for Job Searches, Survey Finds
African-Americans are more likely than average to rely on the Internet for a job search, said the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in a study released Wednesday (http://bit.ly/HK9UR4). Fifty percent of African-American Internet users said the Internet was “very important” to them in successfully finding a job, compared with 36 percent of respondents overall. African-Americans also tended to find social networking sites to be more important to a job search than did most respondents.
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The survey has two “major” implications for policymakers and stakeholders, the Joint Center said: First, efforts to improve people’s digital literacy and skills are likely to improve their capacity to use the Internet effectively for job search. Such programs would especially benefit low-income people, and those with lower levels of educational attainment, as those groups “score significantly lower than average” on measures of digital skills and literacy, the Joint Center said. Second, libraries have a role to play in providing access points for the Internet, as well as digital skills and literacy training, it said.
"This study not only underscores the potential of broadband and mobile technologies in driving policy solutions in economically distressed communities, but it also shows the success that African Americans are having in making the most of digital platforms in finding work,” said Joint Center President Ralph Everett in a statement. “Ensuring digital literacy and broadband access and adoption in every community is a worthwhile endeavor that will pay off in real terms."
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said she was struck by the survey results, such as the finding that 71 percent of African-Americans found that being without a smartphone was a disadvantage during a job search, compared with 34 percent of the rest of the sample. “Although African-Americans lag in broadband adoption at home, access to the Internet is comparable to Whites when you factor in smartphones,” Clyburn said at a Joint Center event Wednesday, according to prepared remarks.
"What this report helps make clear is that people need access to broadband to be full participants in the global economy,” Clyburn said. “Broadband connectivity is critical to economic opportunity and has a cascading effect, because Internet access helps one become digitally literate. Being digitally literate means a person can leverage the Internet to find a job, but being digitally literate also means that a person can leverage the Internet to harness all the benefits from our digital economy.”