We may have a Black man in the White House, but Black men are still being hit hardest by the economic downturn. Employment rates among African-American men have fallen 7.8 percent since November 2007, according to a report by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. The report indicates that Black men, who most commonly are employed in blue-collar jobs like construction, manufacturing and retail, are most vulnerable when pink slips come around. The trend is apparently tied to education, as Black women are twice as likely to go to college and as a result get hired for higher-earning jobs, resulting in a gap between the rate of employment between Black women and Black men—the only ethnic group in the country for whom gender employment favors women.—WLW