Investing

Black Unemployment Rises To 6.2%

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: November 3, 2018 8:25 am

Last Updated: January 11, 2020 3:25 pm

The unemployment picture is generally getting much better. The economy added 250,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment rate held at 3.7%. Black Americans did much worse. Their unemployment rate was 6.2%, up from 6% in October, according to the Employment Situation Summary

The contrast between the Black unemployment rate and rates for other groups was large. The unemployment rate for Asian was 3.2%. Among Whites is was 3.3%. Among Hispanics, it was 4.4%

The spread between the unemployment rate for the country and that for Blacks is not new, although Black unemployment is at a multiyear low. For most months over the last two years, there has been about two and a half percentage points difference between the overall population and Blacks

The balance of the major BLS data for October:

The unemployment rate remained at 3.7 percent in October, and the number of unemployed persons was little changed at 6.1 million. Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons declined by 0.4 percentage point and 449,000,
respectively.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (3.5 percent), adult women (3.4 percent), teenagers (11.9 percent), Whites (3.3 percent), Blacks(6.2 percent), Asians (3.2 percent), and Hispanics (4.4 percent) showed little or no change in October.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was essentially unchanged at 1.4 million in October and accounted for 22.5 percent of the unemployed.

The labor force participation rate increased by 0.2 percentage point to 62.9 percent in October but has shown little change over the year. The employment-population ratio edged up by 0.2 percentage point to 60.6 percent in October and has increased by 0.4
percentage point over the year.

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was essentially unchanged at 4.6 million in October. 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

In October, 1.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, little changed from a year earlier. (Data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.