Jobs Byte: Unemployment for African Americans Rises, Despite Job Growth

[Hannah Bell]

The economy added 216,000 jobs in March, pushing the overall unemployment rate down to 8.8 percent. The growth was driven entirely by a 230,000 gain in the private sector, as the government sector lost jobs for the fifth consecutive month. The employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) also edged up to 58.5 percent -- the highest ratio since September -- although this is still 4.4 percentage points below the pre-recession peak.

African Americans do not appear to be sharing in the benefits of recent job growth. The EPOP for African Americans fell back by 0.3 percentage points to 51.9 percent, just 0.1 percentage points above the recession low hit September. The EPOP for black teens stands at just 14.8 percent. The overall unemployment rate for African Americans rose by 0.2 percentage points to 15.5 percent.

The big gainers in this report were white women who had a 0.2 percentage-point drop in their unemployment rate to 6.9 percent. Their EPOP rose by 0.4 percentage points to 55.7 percent. By contrast, the unemployment rate for white men edged down slightly from 7.8 to 7.7 percent, but their EPOP actually edged down from 68.1 percent to 68.0 percent.

The median and average duration of unemployment spells both increased, with the latter setting another record high at 39.0 weeks. The share of the unemployed who have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks also hit a record high of 45.5 percent. Interestingly, the number of people who have been unemployed less than five weeks rose by 59,000, the first increase since November. This may be an aberration, but it is not consistent with the improving labor market picture elsewhere in the household survey.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/data-bytes/jobs-bytes/2011-04

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