https://madamenoire.com/1169594/the-black-unemployment-hits-highest-rate-in-almost-a-decade/

Source: Spencer Platt / Getty

Even though the overall unemployment rate has dropped, it has risen for African-Americans. According to a recent report by the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall rate dropped to 13.3 % but the unemployment rate for African-Americans have risen to 16.8 %.  This means that there are now 87,000 more black workers who are unemployed due to the coronavirus pandemic.This is the highest the black unemployment rate has been since 2011.

“At a time of unprecedented anguish for our country, today’s jobs report demonstrates just how far we have to go to rebuild the economy, especially for Black Americans,” former U.S. labor department economist William Rodgers said in a statement to CBS. “This is consistent with previous recessions and recoveries: Blacks are the first to get fired and the last to get rehired.”

In May of 2019, the black unemployment rate was only 6.2 %. Last month, it skyrocketed to 16.7 %. Recent data shows that as of May 2020 16.5 % of African-American women are unemployed while 15.5 % of African-American men are unemployed.  The unemployment rate among whites is at 12.4 %, a drop from the 14.2 % rate in April, according to the data.

The Center for Economic Policy Research has shown that African-Americans are more likely to work in front-line careers like  transportation, maintenance,  grocery and convenience stories, postal service, warehouse, trucking and social services. African-Americans account for 29.7% of the workforce in the fields while white people make up 19.2 %.

Bill Spriggs, chief economist at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, told CBS that these rates confirm that blacks were the first to get fired from their jobs and have not been called back to work even though jobs are reopening.

Besides being hit hard by the unemployment caused by the pandemic, African-Americans are said to also have experienced COVID-19 at higher rates. According to research from the APM Research Lab, African-Americans died at a rate of 50.3 per 100,000 people, compared with 20.7 rate for whites,