How the Obama administration can create more jobs among African-Americans

They're certainly focused on jobs as the re-election campaign kicks off, but the macroeconomic strategies contemplated by his coterie of former Clinton administration insiders are not focused on the issues facing black employees.

Because black unemployment is twice that of whites, the actual proportion of the unemployed who are black is large enough to actually drive the overall numbers down.

With large corporations sitting on cash instead of hiring, the best opportunity for the President to actually reduce unemployment is among small businesses, particularly the 1.9 million African-American owned companies.

With the improbability of significant compromise with House Republicans, there are still significant administrative tools at Obama's disposal.  During the 8th National Black Business Month, we saw a number of opportunities which are not being exploited by national policymakers, although there are some promising models at the local level.

Leading up to the month, we conducted a 12-city tour to identify promising companies for our Catapult Innovation Showcase.  A Piece of the Pie: State of Black Business, 8th edition, discusses how those ideas can turn into factories.

Action Step No. 1 -- Increase federal procurement with black-owned businesses to five percent within the next six months.   Through the first three quarters of the year, only $4.1 billion or 1.29 percent was spent with African-American owned companies.

Action Step No. 2 -- Increase participation with black inventors in the Small Business Innovative Research/STTR awards.  These programs fund promising new products, which can lead to manufacturing operations which can revive American manufacturing.

Action Step No. 3 -- Raise federal deposits in Minority Depository Institutions.    This costs nothing, but merely puts federal funds in banks which are proven to make more consumer and business loans in low and moderate income communities.  A mere $22 million has been allocated through the Community Development Financial Institutions fund for business lending, a pittance compared to the bailout of Wall Street.

Action Step No. 4 -- Aggressively show entrepreneurs how to participate in health information technology and other businesses arising from the Affordable Health act.  The largest number of black-owned businesses are in health services. They also hire the largest number of workers.    Every locality should have local firms engaged in making electronic health records, instead of allowing the work to be outsourced offshore.

Action Step No. 5 -- Increase research at historically-black colleges and universities. During the first nine months of the fiscal year, only 170 contracts out of more than 8,500 were awarded to HBCUs.

Action Step No. 6 -- Enforce civil rights employment laws with federal contractors.  Some of the biggest federal contractors have declining black employment, including overrepresentation in layoffs.  Some state and local governments are laying off an overproportion of black workers too, while clamoring for federal dollars.

Action Step No. 7 -- Make a Presidential focus on small and minority businesses by receiving a daily report on utilization of small businesses, including HUBZones, the level of SBA loans and export licenses to small businesses.  Encourage pension funds and banks to invest in minority startups.

Action Step. No. 8 -- Prepare the workforce by holding school districts accountable for increasing black participation in mathematics and science courses at the elementary and secondary levels.