The black youth unemployment rate for ages 16-19 is 393% higher than the national unemployment rate, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Black workers consistently have higher unemployment rates than whites, but the dispersion is even worse for the youth of the United States of America. Nearly one in four black 16- to 24-year-olds was out of work in November, compared to only about one in ten white workers in the same age group.
The situation is actually getting worse for 25- to 34-year-olds. Black workers in that age group actually suffer a worse unemployment rate than they did a year ago. New data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that in November 2013 black workers aged 25 to 34 had an unemployment rate of 13.6 percent. In November 2012, the rate was 12.7 percent. This is more than double the rate of white workers in the same age group who face a 5.9 percent unemployment rate. The fact that the nation's black young adults are worse off than they were a year ago should be a serious concern for leaders of other countries as well. The recovery is slow enough as it is, but the widening racial gap among young people makes this issue even more urgent to address.
Government shutdowns have consequences, particularly in the area of job growth. In October, the African-American unemployment rate rose to 13.1 percent, compared to 12.9 percent for September, according to figures released by the U.S. Labor Department. The national unemployment rate also ticked up slightly, from 7.2 percent to 7.3 percent. The news was not all bad, however. The economy added 204,000 jobs, a figure much higher than expected because of the shutdown.
Blacks bear a disproportionate share of the unemployment burden. The national jobless rate is 7.6 percent; for African Americans, it is 13.7 percent. Since 1979, the unemployment rate for blacks has tracked the same ups and downs as the overall rate, but it has usually been at least twice as high. At the same time, it gets half the attention.
In the fall of 2009, the U.S. unemployment rate topped 10 percent for the first time in a quarter century, causing policymakers and analysts to lament the catastrophe that had befallen the American public. Yet throughout that entire prior period the average rate of African American unemployment had been 12.2 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. While the gap between poverty for blacks and whites has narrowed over decades, at 27.6 percent the black poverty rate is nearly double the overall rate of 15 percent.
American economy is now two years into a shaky recovery following the Great Recession of 2007–2009, yet for the millions of Americans still out of work, the recovery is largely meaningless. All Americans saw significant job losses during the Great Recession and comparatively high unemployment rates persist for all population groups—none more so than African Americans.
The unemployment rates for African Americans by gender, education, and age are much higher today than those of whites, and these unemployment rates for African Americans rose much faster than those for comparable groups of whites during and after the Great Recession. The unemployment rates for many black groups in fact continued to rise during the economic recovery while they started to drop for whites. The first few months of 2011 saw substantial employment gains for African Americans but job growth stalled yet again in the past few months.
It is now painfully clear that African Americans are still facing depression-like unemployment levels. Policymakers should obviously address the overarching problem of unemployment in whatever plan comes together to raise the federal debt limit, but there are unique structural obstacles that prevent African Americans from fully benefiting from economic and labor market growth—obstacles that deserve particular attention when unemployment rates for African Americans stand at the highest levels since 1984.
The unemployment rate is a critical way to gauge the status of various groups in the labor market. The unemployment rate measures the share of available job seekers who are unable to find a job out of the entire labor force. The black unemployment rate tends to be about double that of whites, regardless of the economic climate.
The unemployment data over the past three recessions illustrate two telling trends. First, the unemployment rate among African Americans rises faster than that of whites during a recession. Second, the unemployment rates for African Americans tend to start to rise earlier than those of whites—and those rates tend to stay higher for longer than those of whites. This phenomenon can be described as “first fired, last hired” and is one of the key structural obstacles facing African Americans in the labor market.