Unemployment Rate Ticks Up for Blacks, Drops Overall

By Kenrya Rankin Sep 04, 2015

The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics released the latest unemployment numbers this morning, and while things have improved for the country as a whole, the opposite is true for African Americans.

The national seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate dropped from 5.3 percent in July to 5.1 percent in August, bringing the total number of people who want jobs but can’t find them to just over 8 million. But that improvement did not impact black Americans. In fact, that group’s unemployment rate grew from 9.1 percent to 9.5 percent. In all, there are 1.8 million black people looking for work—an increase of 68,000 month over month.

Latinos experienced a dip in August, with the rate dropping from 6.8 percent to 6.6 percent. Asian Americans fared even better, with a drop from 4.0 percent to 3.5 percent in the latest report. All groups across the board are doing better than this time last year, when national unemployment sat at 6.1 percent.