pull down to refresh
0 sats \ 16 replies \ @Undisciplined 17 Dec \ on: BLS Reality Check: Unemployment by Race (Seasonally Adjusted) Politics_And_Law
It's also interesting to look at labor force participation.
Black labor force participation increases but employment holds flat. So, the increase in unemployment is coming from people who had not been in the labor force previously.
The opposite happened with whites. Labor force participation declined and employment was flat. So the unemployment rate didn't increase because people just dropped out of the workforce.
Chart 1 shows that’s not accurate:
Black workers: Employment grew from ~20,500k to ~21,050k (July to Nov). Labor force grew even more (22,400k to 23,000k). So employment increased, just not fast enough to absorb new entrants.
White workers: Employment actually declined slightly (~123,850k to ~123,450k) while labor force stayed flat.
Chart 2 shows the scale: Black unemployment rose 19.2% (employment +2.7%, labor force +3.9%). White unemployment rose 4.1% (employment -0.1%, labor force flat).
Both saw unemployment rise through different mechanisms, but the magnitude is drastically different.
reply
I was talking about the same YoY that you had been
reply
Yes! The YoY deterioration in Black unemployment is really striking when you look at the data. November 2024 was 6.4%, November 2025 is 8.3%.
reply
It is but my point is that a lot of that increase is coming from the decrease in how many were out of the labor force, rather than from those who were employed.
This usually means people are unsuccessfully trying to find work. I don't have any idea why that shift would have happened during the past year.
reply
BLS A-2 shows Black labor force ↑ ~892k from Jul→Nov 2025, but employment also ↑ ~584k (not flat) while unemployed ↑ ~308k. So yes, more people entered the labor force, but it’s both more employed and more unemployed, not “instead of employment."
reply
That's the population growing. From Nov-Nov, the employed share is almost exactly the same: 58.5 vs 58.6.
The unemployment rate went up because less of the increased population was out of the labor force entirely.
reply
You and I already went through this debate on the Black women employment data. #1291753 We clearly interpret the labor force dynamics differently.
Your argument here (that employment-population ratio stayed flat at 58.5 vs 58.6) doesn’t address why the unemployment rate itself spiked from 6.4% to 8.3% for Black workers while White unemployment barely moved (3.8% to 3.9%).
Labor force participation explains the mechanism, but it doesn’t explain the disparity in magnitude, which is what my chart shows.
reply
It’s not really a debate. Unemployment is the combination of not being employed and being in the labor force.
The labor force is everyone who is employed or looking for work.
The share of black workers who had jobs didn’t change. So, the increase in unemployment has to come from more black people trying to find work.
I said I don’t know why that would have happened. The chart you’re referencing doesn’t explain why it happened either.