unemployment
The gap between black unemployment and white unemployment is now the smallest in history
The unemployment rate in the U.S. has fallen to its lowest point in 18 years, additionally shrinking the gap between black unemployment and white unemployment, the Labor Department reported Friday.
Black unemployment is down to 5.9 percent, while white unemployment is at 3.5 percent — the smallest gap between the two rates ever recorded.
The overall rate is at an 18-year low, at 3.8 percent. The economy added 223,000 jobs in May, even more than economists predicted. Unemployment has fallen steadily since the Great Recession, reports CNN Money, after peaking at 10 percent in 2009.
President Trump has often touted his administration's success in bringing down the unemployment rate for black Americans and other minorities, and he took to Twitter to preview today's good news. The black unemployment rate has fallen from 7.8 percent to 5.9 percent since Trump took office, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reports. Data shows that between 2010 and 2017, the rate fell from a peak of 16.8 percent to 7.8 percent.
There has always been a significant gap between black and white unemployment rates, reports The Washington Post, but May's numbers show the smallest gap ever, since the government started recording racial data in the 1970s.