(Crankers) As the U.S. labor market cools, the unemployment rate for Black workers is climbing despite campaign pledges to protect “black jobs,” but data analysts say they have identified the likely cause behind the spike.
Seasonally adjusted figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show the unemployment rate for black Americans climbed from 7.2% in July to 7.5% in August — the highest level since October 2021. By comparison, overall unemployment stands at 4.3% and just 3.7% for white workers.
While racial disparities in employment have long been a feature of the U.S. labor market, the recent trend is striking. Since January, white unemployment has inched up 0.3 percentage points, while black unemployment has risen 1.3 points, with most of that increase occurring over the past three months.
“I think part of the surge over the last few months is that Black workers were overrepresented in the federal workforce,” Gary Hoover, a professor at Tulane University’s Department of Economics, told Newsweek.
A Pew Research Center report released in January, as federal workers prepared for sweeping cuts promised by President Trump, found that black Americans accounted for 18.6% of the federal workforce, compared with 12.8% of the U.S. population.
“Thus, huge indiscriminate cuts in the federal work force have meant an overrepresentation in employment cuts for these workers,” Hoover said.