Trump has bragged that African-American unemployment is at a record low. That is no longer true.

Unemployment.
(Image credit: David McNew/Getty Images)

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."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.