“It wasn’t all women that lost jobs (in the December jobs report), it was mostly Black and Latina women. In fact, white women gained employment.”
By December 2017, the unemployment rates for the four major race and ethnicity groups had returned to their prerecession levels. The rates for Blacks and Hispanics have remained higher than the rates for Whites and Asians. In December 2017, the unemployment rate for Blacks (6.8 percent) was 3.1 percentage points above that for Whites (3.7 percent) but the lowest in the series’ history. The December 2017 rate for Hispanics (4.9 percent) was 1.2 percentage points higher than the rate for Whites but also little different from the series’ low.5 The unemployment rate for Asians (2.5 percent) was 1.2 percentage points lower than that for Whites. [...] During the recession, employment declined sharply for all major race and ethnicity groups, but the decline was most pronounced among Blacks. The employment–population ratio for Blacks declined by almost 7 percentage points during and after the recession. At the low point in July 2011, only about half (51.0 percent) of Blacks were employed. Consistent with historical patterns, Black men fared worse than did men of other race and ethnicity groups. In fact, from 2009 to 2011, their employment–population ratio fell below the ratio for White women and was level with the ratio for Asian women. The ratio for Black women trended similarly to the ratios for women of other race and ethnicity groups.