Black Unemployment Rate Falls Below 10%

[DonViejo]

Source: TPM/Wall Street Journal

For the first time since 2007, the unemployment rate for black Americans has fallen below 10 percent. But it is still twice the national average and more than two times the rate for whites. Researchers have found that discrimination plays an obvious role in the distinction, with black applicants not getting called back for interviews as often as white Americans.

Read it at The Wall Street Journal


###

Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/08/06/black-unemployment-rate-falls-below-10.html

[Recursion]

1. The national average is still just north of 5

So it can't be "twice that national average", though it is "twice the white average", which is probably what the author meant...

[Fred Sanders]

3. Yes, we know, almost 10 is more than 5. Turn that frown upside down! This is great news!

I know, I know, who wants good news, not much to fight over or get outraged about, but still!

All hail Obama!

[Recursion]

4. Huh?

Almost 10 is less than double just over 5. Surely we can both agree on that?

[Darb]

7. Blacks and whites are included in the 5.3%, not to mention

asians, hispanics, etc. etc.

The statement was twice the white, not twice the overall.

Mmmmmkay?

[NYCButterfinger]

2. Good, but more work needs to be done.

Jobs are needed in the black community and in all communities. Discrimination should never happen with jobs, but it does for some reason.

[TexasBushwhacker]

5. This sounds terrible, but they might want to go with

initials on their resumes. Anglo male sounding names get call backs at twice the rate of "black sounding", Latino or female names.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/mar/15/jalen-ross/black-name-resume-50-percent-less-likely-get-respo/

Being female or having a female sounding name works against you in male dominated fields as well.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2013/07/man-named-kim-adds-mr-to-resume-lands-job/

[Igel]

8. There's always discrimination.

Some of it is racial. (You have to be old enough to remember that "discrimination" isn't always a bad thing. I discriminate between spoiled and fresh food on a frequent basis in my fridge. Psychologists say that children are masters at discrimination because they know what sorts of behaviors are tolerated in different situations.)

Some is reasonable, by field of specialization.

Some fields have unemployment rates well under 2 or 3%. Other degrees don't get you the same unemployment rates. Civil engineers are something like 3% black, even though the workforce is about 12% black. Chemical engineers are about 4% black. (There's a nice document at www.census.gov with a link that gets garbled when I try to copy it. Google "chemical engineers demographics racial" and it'll be in the top 10.

Factor in that kind of discrimination (reasonable) with the kinds of racial discrimination that you get in lower-paying jobs, plus the other things that go along with how American society is structured (for example, transportation), and there are a lot of obstacles to overcome. Some structural, some involving the unemployed, some involving the employers.

[Sunlei]

6. I think we should build about 20 huge teaching hospitals across America near areas with the highest

unemployment.

Public non-profit college hospitals, Gov. subsidized, and start to train people in the medical field. Could be a win-win for our society, we need more Doctors and people trained in the medical field.

Americans need more places to go for their health care needs where 'for profit' is not the priority of the medical professionals.

[Psephos]

9. suuuuurrre it did

jeezus, the true figure for the whole country is still well north of ten percent

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts

[Truprogressive85]

10. nice headline but

From the WSJ article

a 2014 analysis found that 12.4% of black college graduates aged 22 to 27 were unemployed, compared with 5.6% of all college graduates in the same age group.

How are any of the candidates going to fix this ?