Business
Black unemployment rate reducing as U.S. economy adds more jobs
(NNPA) – After three consecutive months of the U.S. economy adding more than jobs, the black unemployment rate could dip below 10 percent by mid-2015 if current trends continue, says Valerie Wilson, an economist and director of the Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy (PREE) at Economic Policy Institute.
When Wilson analyzed the labor force participation rate, which includes people that currently hold jobs or are looking for work and the employment-population ratio for all workers, she found that African Americans had the biggest increase in both measures from December 2013 to December 2014.
“If the same trends in the labor force participation rate and the decline in the unemployment rate that we saw in 2014 continue into 2015, the Black unemployment rate should get down to the single digits by the middle of this year,” said Wilson.
The Black unemployment rate decreased from 11 percent in November to 10.4 percent in December, and the jobless rate for White workers ticked down 0.1 percent to 4.8 percent in December, according to the latest jobs report by the U.S. Labor Department.
The unemployment rate for Black men over 20 years old ticked down from 11.2 percent to 11 percent in December while the unemployment rate for White men fell from 4.6 to 4.4 percent over that period.
The unemployment rate for Black women over 20 years-old slid from 9.5 percent in November to 8.2 percent in December and White women saw their unemployment rate inch down from 4.5 percent to 4.4 percent during the same period.
The Labor Department also revised the number of jobs added in October – 261,000 and November – 353,000, accounting for an increase of 50,000 jobs. American workers found jobs in professional and business services, construction, food services and drinking places, health care, and manufacturing in December.
Wilson said that December’s jobs report signals that the prospect of economic recovery in the Black community is pretty strong. She said, “The African American workforce is benefiting from the job growth that is taking place right now and the longer that continues, the better it’s going to be for those communities.”
