The Congressional Black Caucus' stone-faced reaction to President Trump's claim that "African-American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded" went viral during his State of the Union on Tuesday, but by Friday the president's assertion was no longer true anyway. In the January jobs report, the black unemployment rate rose from 6.8 percent in December 2017 to 7.7 percent in the first month of 2018, Yahoo Finance reports.
Many had already taken issue with Trump's decision to boast about the unemployment rate among African-Americans earlier this week. The rate has been "steadily declining since March 2010," when it was 16.8 percent, Fortune writes, and "while Trump was in office, it decreased by one point — keeping up a trend that had already been in place."
Even a low of 6.8 percent isn't something particularly brag-worthy; that number is still significantly higher than the unemployment rate in the U.S. overall, which was 4.1 percent in December, Fortune adds.
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Overall, unemployment remains unchanged at 4.1 percent in the January jobs report, a 17-year low.
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