"This is the first time since my son was a baby that I don't have a job," said the Santa Ana resident. Brayton has cut back on her telephone service and canceled her satellite television service. She told her 16-year-old son, Zaine, to start looking for work to help with household expenses.
While the recession has touched virtually every industry, it has battered traditional strongholds of black employment and is threatening such secure bastions as public education and government services.
Nationally, the troubled auto industry, which has been particularly welcoming to African Americans, has slashed tens of thousands of high-paying, unionized positions. Retail, services and manufacturing, which disproportionately hire blacks, have slumped.
In Southern California, the downturn has hurt African American men, who are heavily represented in many blue-collar industries. The effects of slowing trade with China are rippling through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, long a steady source of work for black longshoremen, truckers and warehouse workers. Since February 2008, more jobs have been lost in California's trade, transportation and utilities sector -- nearly 160,000 -- than in any other industry segment.
The growing layoffs among higher-paid African Americans and steep foreclosure rates in their neighborhoods are dealing a crippling blow to the nation's black middle class, community leaders say.
"I have not seen anything like this. It's just different," said the Rev. Norman Johnson, pastor of the First New Christian Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church in South Los Angeles. The church's food bank serves about 700 families a month, up from 400 before the recession started.
"A lot of middle-class African Americans built their wealth through their homes," he said. "With the declines in real estate we have seen, they are really struggling."
Catrisa Booker, a 12-year veteran of the Los Angeles public school system, fears she's about to be locked in just that struggle. Until this month, Booker thought she had it made, earning a six-figure salary as a reading and writing specialist. On the side, she was close to finishing work on a doctorate in educational administration at Pepperdine University.
Then she got the news that her position was being eliminated because of recession-related budget cuts. If she's lucky enough to land a teaching job back in the classroom -- and that's far from certain -- she would have to take a 40% pay cut.
