*In January, Black men’s unemployment rate jumped to 5.3%, up from 4.6% in December, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Overall, however, the Black unemployment rate is consistently higher than that of white workers, ABC News reports.
As we reported previously, citing 24/7 Wallest, racism/discrimination and single-adult households are the top contributing factors for the higher jobless rates among Black Americans, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Black men are also less likely to participate in the labor force as a result of mass incarceration.
Unemployment rates in Black communities are also high due to low educational achievement.
“Employment equity is essential to racial and economic justice because work is essential,” Valerie Wilson, the director of a program on race, ethnicity and the economy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told ABC News. “It’s people’s ability to provide for themselves and their families.”
Here’s more from ABC News:
The ironclad disparity owes to continued discrimination in the job market, as well as a persistent racial disparity in educational attainment and professional networks, among other factors, economists and advocates told ABC News.
Racial differences in the unemployment rate stem in large part from ongoing discrimination that influences choices made by companies about which workers to add or lay off, economists told ABC News.
Many economists use a shorthand to describe the conditions endured by Black workers: first fired, last hired.
“Discrimination still exists,” Christian Weller, a professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts at Boston who studies racial disparities in employment, told ABC News.
Meanwhile, we reported in 2023 that Black American workers are taking advantage of a pandemic-related boom in the transportation and utilities sector.
In 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, nearly 20 percent of the 2.3m truck transportation workers in America were Black.
“The number of Black women who became truck drivers [over the past year] alone and meaningfully boosted their income was huge,” Julia Pollak, chief economist for the jobs site ZipRecruiter, told The Financial Times.
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