Black unemployment peaked at 16 when the national rate was 10. It dropped to 9.1...

qmalzp · on Oct 14, 2016

Depends on how you look at it.

Going from 84% to 90.9% employment rate represents an 8.21% increase in the proportion of black people who are employed.

Going from 90% to 95% employment rate represents a 5.55% increase in the proportion of Americans who are employed.

kurthr · on Oct 14, 2016

I am confused. How can a decrease in unemployment from 16% to 9 not be an objective improvement for american blacks in years?

Do they look back from todays "hellscape" recovery and remember the wonder days when we wondered how many people would lose their jobs or homes to foreclosure? Or did they rejoice when black RNC head Michael Steele was forced to kowtow Rush Limbaugh after Obama was elected?

dexterdog · on Oct 14, 2016

Because unemployment improved for everybody, but it improved for a significantly smaller percentage of blacks that it did for the population as a whole.

nl · on Oct 14, 2016

It dropped ~6.9% for blacks, ~5% for the population as a whole.

Prior to the financial crisis it was 4.6% overall, 8.3% for blacks[1].

So now it is 8.9% worse that the per-crisis number for all employment (ie, (5-4.6)/4.6) vs 8.5% worse for blacks (ie (9-8.3)/8.3).

Sure, I'm sure you can play with the numbers to give it the spin you want, and I can spin them the other way.

But it's pretty difficult to argue that it is significantly worse now than it was before.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/race-and-ethnicity/archive/r...

kolinko · on Oct 14, 2016

Do you understand the difference between speed and acceleration?