High Unemployment Rate For Blacks, But It Varies By State

The unemployment rate for blacks is a lot higher than it is for whites. In the latest jobs report, the ratio was more than two to one: 11.4 percent compared to 5.3 percent. But within that overall trend, there are some significant variations by state and region, and reporter Philip Bump, in the Washington Post, crunches the numbers. He also looks at the long range trends and finds that the unemployment rate disparity between blacks and whites is consistent. There was just one year, in one state – Massachusetts, in 2007 – when the unemployment rate for blacks was lower than that for whites. The worse the economy gets, the closer the ratio gets to evening out. When the economy picks up, the disparity reasserts itself.