Public sector job cuts are taking a disproportionate toll on women in general, and black women in particular, Amy Lieberman reports for Women’s eNews:

Women, meanwhile, have suffered a disproportionate majority–nearly 66 percent–of the public sector job losses. For black women–who have higher overall levels of unemployment and rely on public sector jobs as their second-biggest source of employment–outsourcing is particularly harmful, according to Steven Pitts, a labor policy specialist at University of California, Berkeley.

From 2008 through 2010, a black woman was 22 percent more likely to be employed in the public sector than a non-black woman, Pitts found in an April 2011 research brief on black workers and the public sector.

Pitts says questions of race and gender haven’t factored into the national dialogue of public sector cuts and who they are most likely to affect.

Women’s unemployment in the U.S. declined last month to 7.8 percent, but African American women’s unemployment rate in November remains well above that at 12.9 percent, according to the National Women’s Law Center.

New York City cut laid of 642 support staff workers in October, most of them women of color. One such worker is Cliftonia Johnson, pictured above, a 13-year veteran of the New York City school system. She and her colleagues saw their jobs farmed out to private contractors. The jobs were cut in the name of austerity, but Lieberman raises doubts that the cuts are saving money. Johnson’s union, District Council 37 (DC 37) plans to sue the city for cutting jobs in bad faith.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg tried to veto legislation that would require the city to prove that privatization projects save money, but the City Council overrode his veto.

[Photo credit: Amy Lieberman, Women’s eNews.]