Current Affairs: Black Buying Power Will Grow

Black Buying Power Grows While Individual Quality of Life Falls!

Story:
By Brittany Hutson NNPA Special Correspondent
Monday, May 11, 2009 9:31 AM CDT

WASHINGTON (NNPA) - Despite an economy represented by high unemployment rates, a home foreclosure crisis and low consumer confidence, African-American buying power is projected to reach $1.2 trillion in 2013, according to a report conducted by the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth. [click to continue reading the article]

Buying Power is the total income of residents that is available after taxes, excluding borrowed or saved from previous years. Buying Power is not a measure of wealth.

The Gist

• Black buying power is set to grow from 913 Billion in 2008 to 1.2 Trillion in 2013. Meaning we (as a community or collective purchasing unit) will be able to supply life blood to many economic entities, businesses, organizations and communities.
• Black share of the US total buying power will rise to 8.8 percent due to community population growth and expansion of Black owned businesses.
• Even with growth in "buying power" Black people will continue to bear the brunt of high unemployment, suffer increase in poverty and reduction in wages and income.
  
• From 1990s-2007 though the US economy grew significantly Black communities did not share in that prosperity.
  
• In that period Black unemployment rose, home ownership dropped, and poverty increased.
• Income and wages decreased by over $400 per individual
  
• Today the Black community has the ability to generate wealth & non Black communities are directly benefiting from this existing Black Power
  

Here's the Catch.

• Black buying power is only useful for those who desire to use the collective trends and purchasing habits of the Black community as a whole.
  
• Black people individually share little in the prosperity of the US economy but as a unit We are extremely valuable.
  

Key Quotes

"African-Americans are not aware of their collective buying power" "We need to recognize how much power we have and [we can use that ] to build wealth in our own community"

-Mark Morial, President&CEO of the National Urban League