For Black Women, There's Nothing To Celebrate In The Unemployment Numbers
President Donald Trump was quick to celebrate a surprise fall in the unemployment rate on Friday morning, practically exploding with excitement at the news that in May the jobless rate fell to 13.3% from 14.7% in April.
“These numbers are joyous,” he tweeted, before holding a press conference congratulating himself for what are still historically terrible unemployment numbers ― worse than anything seen during the Great Recession.
There’s just one crucial thing Trump didn’t mention: Black unemployment. The percentage of Black people without jobs hardly budged in May. For African American workers over age 20, the unemployment rate was 16% in May, down from 16.3% the previous month, according to an analysis of Labor Department data from researcher Jasmine Tucker at the National Women’s Law Center. (For Black workers age 16 and up, the unemployment number rose to 16.8%.)
It’s just the latest sign that Black Americans are disproportionately struggling right now while dealing with the triple storm of COVID-19’s health effects, an economy in free-fall, and protests against police brutality sweeping the country.
Drill down into the numbers released Friday, you find that it is Black women in particular who are hurting.
While Black men age 20 and up saw a slight increase in jobs last month, things got worse for Black women, with their jobless rate ticking up to 16.5% from 16.4%, according to a separate analysis from the National Women’s Law Center released Friday.
“Everyone else saw slight improvement in May, but Black women just stagnated,” said Tucker. “It comes back to the racism and sexism they’re going to face in reentering the workforce.”
The issue for Black women is, first, they were disproportionately overrepresented in many of the industries hit hardest by coronavirus-related job losses ― including retail and hospitality jobs in the restaurant and leisure sectors.
And second, now that companies are starting to bring back...
