A new study paints a bleak portrait of the unemployment landscape faced by young black men in New York City.

The headline of the report, filed by the Community Service Society of New York reads, “Only One in Four Young Black Men in New York City Have a Job.”

The study finds that the unemployment rate for African–American men in New York, between the ages of 16 and 24, was 33.5 percent from January 2009 through June 2010.

By comparison, the jobless rate amongst all New Yorkers in that age range was 24.6 percent.

But the real startling figure is that employment-population ratio, the percentage of working-age population who have a job, for young black men decreased from 29% in 2006-2007 to 25% in 2009–2010, meaning that one in four black men were employed. For those without a high school diploma, the numbers spiked alarmingly — this group‘s unemployment rate was 52%, with 86% percent of these men out of the labor force (essentially that 1 in 10 were employed in 2009–2010).

From the New York Times:

“The recession has created a landscape of the unemployed and underemployed with particular catastrophic consequences for young African–American men,” said David R. Jones, president of the Community Service Society, an advocacy group for New York’s low-income residents. “Now young black men between 16 and 24 years have become the banner of hopelessness, particularly here in New York City.”

The Times also notes that close to 40 percent of black New Yorkers who had held a job previously were unemployed for more than 12 months during the recession and early part of the recovery. That compared with 24 percent for whites, 27 percent for Latinos and 26 percent for Asians.