Black Women Responsible For All Employment Gains In African-Americans

Based off numbers from last month, Black women are responsible for all the job gains in the African-American community.

According to The Root:

The economy added 114,000 jobs last month, on top of an upward revision of 86,000 jobs to July and August. The private sector has added jobs for 31 consecutive months, and after coming into office in the depths of the Great Recession, President Barack Obama has created more than a million jobs over his first term. For the first time since he took office, the unemployment rate is below 8 percent, hitting 7.8 percent in September.

Meanwhile, the share of African Americans with a job edged up from 52.7 percent to 53.0 percent and the unemployment rate fell to 13.4 percent, after hovering just above 14 percent for the past three months. Among adults ages 20 and over, all of the gains for African Americans were among women. Although the share of black adult women overall employed rose from 55.1 percent to 55.3 percent, the share of black adult men employed fell from 57.7 percent to 57.5 percent. Both adult men and women, however, have seen their employment rate rise over the past year 0.5 percentage points.

Last month’s decline in the unemployment rate was driven by large reported employment gains, with 873,000 people indicating that they got a job in September. This is an exceptionally large one-month gain in reported employment, and therefore we should interpret it carefully. Higher employment is consistent with data from the establishment survey, however, and while the pace of reported employment in the household survey will likely be slower in the months to come, it is clear that employment is rising.

Both men and women reported increased employment, with 67.5 percent of adult men (ages 20 and over) reporting having a job in September — up from 67.0 percent a year ago — and 55.1 percent of adult women reporting having a job — up from 55.0 percent a year ago. Employment grew most for workers with some college or more, while falling for workers with only a high school diploma.

Alongside hiring, wages grew by 7 cents in September for an annualized quarterly rate of growth of 1.6 percent. However, this means that workers are not seeing real earnings gains, since the rate of inflation over the past year — as measured by the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers — rose by 1.8 percent.

These data show that in the wake of a massive recession caused by a financial crisis like the one we have lived through in recent years, the best antidote to high unemployment is deficit spending until the unemployment rate comes down.

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