We have more jobs in the U.S. than we have people to fill them. This is what economists mean by full employment and it should be a cause for celebration. When more people are working, wages increase — especially for low-wage earners, according to a Federal Reserve report. Very low unemployment (referring to people who do not have a job, but have been actively looking for work in the past four weeks) can foreshadow price inflation as employers make up for lost profits due to increased personnel costs. Consequently, the Federal Reserve can increase interests rates as an attempt to curtail that behavior, but in general the more people working the better it is for families, communities and the country.

However, the discourse on full employment not only masks severe racial disparities in employment in different cities, it accepts social inequality as a given.

In Chicago, blacks are 52 percent of the people who are considered unemployed and post a 12.7 unemployment rate. That’s in comparison to whites who are 16 percent of the total number unemployed and have a 3.5 percent unemployment rate, according to data compiled by my colleagues at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank. In Baltimore, blacks are the majority of the population, are 81 percent of the unemployed, and have a 9.5 percent unemployment rate compared to whites, who are 11 percent of the unemployed but have a 2.7 percent unemployment rate.

If such high levels of black unemployment are part of the criteria for "full employment," then this is unacceptable. African Americans  can’t be the sacrificial lambs of the labor force.

Read the full article about "full employment" and the struggles of the African-American workforce by Andre Perry at CityLab.