Friday, May 04, 2018

The black unemployment rate

The national unemployment rate for blacks in April 2018 was 6.6%, the lowest it has been since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) started compiling such data in 1972, some 46 years ago. I'm not one who says Obama deserves no credit--the unemployment rate was normalizing the last year of his presidency. But I do say if he had been willing to cut regulations and taxes, the recession would have really been over, and instead of the artificial date of June 2009, it could have been the actual date. The "great recession" could have been as brief as the one President Bush inherited. But if he'd done that, if he'd done something to benefit employers and tax payers instead of the federal government, he would have been drummed out of his party, and there would have been no second term.

Also both the income and the employment rate isn’t the same for all blacks. Immigrant Africans and island blacks usually have incomes higher than American blacks.   Jamaican Americans have an income of almost a third higher than that of native born American blacks.  Even Haitian Americans have a higher income than American born blacks.

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