After Trump's Repeated Boasts, Black Unemployment Spikes Up From Record Low

[DonViejo]

Source: Mediate


by Lawrence Bonk | 10:31 am, February 2nd, 2018

One of President Donald Trump’s favorite boasts, in recent weeks, is noting the fact that unemployment among black workers has sunken to record lows during his tenure in office — even taking full credit for the decline.

Link to tweet

In Trump’s first year in office, he presided over a 1% decline in the black unemployment rate, which is really just the continuation of a 1% per-year decline that started under President Obama.

But now, it looks like Trump won’t have “record low” talking point to kick around anymore.

The January jobs report is in, and black unemployment has spiked, to 7.7 percent, more than one full percentage point higher than it was in December’s report.

Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/donald-trump/after-trumps-repeated-boasts-black-unemployment-spikes-up-from-record-low/

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. Here are links to the tables.

From the report:

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for Blacks increased to 7.7 percent in January, and the rate for Whites edged down to 3.5 percent. The jobless rates for adult men (3.9 percent), adult women (3.6 percent), teenagers (13.9 percent), Asians (3.0 percent), and Hispanics (5.0 percent) showed little change. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

Table A-1. Employment status of the civilian population by sex and age

Table A-2. Employment status of the civilian population by race, sex, and age

Table A-3. Employment status of the Hispanic or Latino population by sex and age

It was high last January too, 7.8 percent.

[Chemisse]

2. The trouble with taking credit for things you don't have much control over

is getting blamed when it goes south.

While I am not happy that more blacks are unemployed, I am definitely pleased that Trump looks like a fool over it.

[LexVegas]

3. It's Obama's fault. nt

[progree]

4. Here's the BLS data series and a graph

black unemploymenent rate https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000006

Zooming in on the last couple of years to show how it bounces around


And here it is going back to 1972 -- the earliest year of this series