Business
Unemployment: By the numbers
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08 Nov 2012
- Written by Tri-State Defender Newsroom
According to the federal unemployment rate report released last Friday (Nov. 2):
• The unemployment rate ticked up from 7.8 to 7.9 percent.
• The African-American unemployment rate rose from 13.4 to 14.3 percent.
• Unemployment rates for African-American women rose from 10.9 to 12.4 percent.
• African-American male unemployment dropped from 14.2 to 14.1 percent.
• More than 5 million people have been officially unemployed for more than half a year. They have been looking for work for an average of 41 weeks.
• More than 600,000 people returned to the labor force as a result of recent trends.
• Factoring in hidden unemployment and other measures, the 7.8 percent overall rate of unemployment is reported as 14.6 percent. Thus, the African-American unemployment rate of 14.3 percent translates to an overall rate of 26.4 percent. That means more than one in four African Americans is unemployed.
• In some urban areas, as many as half of the African-American male population does not work.
