Snopes: 'Trump misleadingly puts black youth unemployment rate at 59%' MOSTLY FALSE

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http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/20/donald-trump/trump-misleadingly-puts-black-youth-unemployment-r/

Trump misleadingly puts black youth unemployment rate at 59 percent

By Warren Fiske on Monday, June 20th, 2016 at 12:00 a.m.

Donald Trump recently told Richmonders that he was amending his campaign theme, "Make America Great Again," to strike an inclusive note.

"I’ve added a couple of things," he said during a June 11 rally at the Richmond Coliseum. "I’m adding ‘Make America Great Again,’ and I’m adding ‘For Everyone,’ because it’s really going to be for everyone. It’s not going to be for a group of people; it’s going to be for everyone.

"If you look at what’s going on in this country, African-American youth is an example: 59 percent unemployment rate; 59 percent," Trump said.

"If you look at what’s going on with Latinos, Hispanics - tremendous unemployment rates. You look at what’s going on with so many groups. We’re going to make it great for everyone. We’re going to bring jobs back to our country."

The 59 percent unemployment rate for black youths caught our attention. We wondered if Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is right.

The latest figures from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics pegged the unemployment rate for blacks, ages 16 to 19, at 27.1 percent in May.

So where did Trump come up with the eye-popping 59 percent? We can’t say with certainty, because Trump’s campaign, as usual, didn’t respond to our question. But Tara Sinclair, an economist at George Washington University, offered a clue.

Sinclair told us Trump’s percentage probably comes from a Bureau of Labor Statistics statistic called the "employment-population ratio." This is a figure that gauges employed people, age 16 and older, as a percentage of the entire population of adults.

In May, the bureau said the employment-population ratio for blacks ages 16 to 24 was 41.5 percent. Flipped over, that would mean that the unemployment ratio - although such a statistic is not published by the bureau - would be 58.5 percent. That’s pretty close to the 59 percent figure Trump cited, Sinclair noted.

But there are differences between the ratio and the widely used unemployment rate, which Trump used in citing the percentage.