June Stewart learned about money at a very early age. Her mother was disciplined about money and taught Stewart the financial basics. Stewart got her first job in her teens and a checkbook shortly thereafter. She became a contributor to her household and shared what she earned. “My parents didn’t go to college, but my mother invested in stocks and watched her stocks grow,” Stewart says. “I feel like I got a strong foundation. I understood the whole framework around finances, investing and managing money, giving back and being a wise steward.”

Today, the 41-year-old human resources specialist Columbus, Ohio is passing on her mother’s values to her 5-year-old daughter. “When I found out I was pregnant, I called my financial guy to find out how much it would cost to pay for my daughter to go to school,” Stewart says. “She got her payout before she even got here.” Read the full story

Regardless of your race, education or age, the recession and current “jobless recovery” is impacting how you and those around you live. That said, some groups are definitely being hit  harder than others.

The NYT Economix blog has a great interactive graph showing the impact of the recession on different demographics. You might not surprised to see that unemployment rates for black men without a high school diploma are depressingly high (30.9%), but you might be surprised that their hispanic peers have an unemployment rate of  half that (14.6%). More surprising: white males without high diplomas have 4% higher unemployment than hispanic males (18.4%).

Here is the overall breakdown of unemployment rates by education level.

Breakdown of US Unemployment by education level.

As you can see, the unemployment rates for Black and White men without high school diplomas beat the national average while Hispanic men come in just below the peak.

The question is, “Why?” Thats not a rhetorical question either. I’d really like to hear your opinion. Leave your ideas and any other insights you get from the data in the comments.

Diversity MBA Magazine will be looking at this and other demographic disparities over the next few week. Let us know if you have any particular questions by leaving them in the comments.