A remarkable look at the gap between black and white unemployment
By Philip Bump August 4
We've noted in the past that black unemployment has exceeded white unemployment nationally in every single month since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping records. In fact, it has always been at least two-thirds higher. Every month.
Valerie Wilson at the Economic Policy Institute breaks out data on unemployment by race and state and quarter, allowing for a more refined look at this racial split on jobs. "Nationally" in the second quarter, she writes, "African Americans had the highest unemployment rate, at 9.5 percent, followed by Latinos (6.6 percent), whites (4.6 percent), and Asians (3.8 percent)." What's more, she notes, the state with the lowest black unemployment, Tennessee, had the same unemployment rate for blacks as the white unemployment rate in the state with the highest white unemployment.
The most dramatic way to look at it, though, is by toggling through the tabs below. The first map shown indicates total unemployment, according to EPI data. Click through to see white, black and Hispanic unemployment. (States with cross-hatching on the charts below didn't have enough population among the racial group to be statistically significant.)
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