Black Unemployment at 6%

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 11, 4:48PM EST · Published Oct 6, 8:00AM EDT

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Black Unemployment at 6% — © BluIz60 / iStock

Among the things largely lost in the new jobs report, the Employment Situation Summary for September, is that the unemployment rate for black Americans was 6%. This is what the national unemployment rate was in September 2014, when the economy was at the tail end of its recovery from the Great Recession.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that in September the national jobless rate dropped to 3.7% as the economy added 134,000 jobs. The number was less than what was expected by many economists but was impressive nevertheless because it was the lowest since 1969.

But the rate remains very uneven. In September, the rate among white Americans was 3.3%. Among adult men, it was 3.4%. Among Asians the figure was 3.5%, and among Hispanics it was 4.5%.

Granted, the black unemployment rate was down from 6.3% in August. However, it is higher than in September 2017, when the rate was 5.8%. The national unemployment rate in September of last year was, on the other hand, 4.2%, so the new 3.7% in a substantial improvement across the entire national workforce over the one-year period.

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A summary of the BLS report for September:

The unemployment rate declined by 0.2 percentage point to 3.7 percent in September, and the number of unemployed persons decreased by 270,000 to 6.0 million. Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons declined by 0.5 percentage point and 795,000, respectively.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult women (3.3 percent) and Whites (3.3 percent) declined in September. The jobless rates for adult men (3.4 percent), teenagers (12.8 percent), Blacks (6.0 percent), Asians (3.5 percent), and Hispanics (4.5 percent) showed little or no change over the month.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 1.4 million over the month; these individuals accounted for 22.9 percent of the unemployed.

In September, the labor force participation rate remained at 62.7 percent, and the employment-population ratio, at 60.4 percent, was little changed.

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) increased by 263,000 to 4.6 million in September. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.