Economy

Unemployment Rate Among Black Americans At 7.7%

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: February 5, 2017 8:19 am

Last Updated: January 12, 2020 3:09 pm

While the economy has added millions of jobs over the last year, and in January added 227,000 which drove an unemployment rate of 4.8%, the rate among Black Americans remained high at 7.7%

The unemployment rate among White Americans is lower than the national rate, and was 4.3% last month. Among Asian Americans, it was 4.7%.

According to the BLS:

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 227,000 in January, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 4.8 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in retail trade, construction, and financial activities.

More specifically,

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for Asians (3.7 percent) increased in January. The jobless rates for adult men (4.4 percent), adult women (4.4 percent), teenagers (15.0 percent), Whites (4.3 percent), Blacks (7.7 percent), and Hispanics (5.9 percent) showed little or no change over the month.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the trend is long lived:

The black unemployment rate is nearly or more than twice the white unemployment rate regardless of educational attainment. It is, and always has been, about twice the white unemployment rate; however, the depth of this racial inequality in the labor market rarely makes the headlines.

That would indicate to some extent that no one has come up with a solution