The U.S. added jobs again in April, but Black workers saw their unemployment rate rise to 7.3% — still the highest among any major racial group, even though the national unemployment rate remained at 4.3%, according to the latest Employment Situation Summary report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
That “stronger-than-expected” number tends to obscure the worsening picture for Black jobseekers, a fact that has become a recurring feature of the labor market, said Cantrell Dumas, senior researcher for financial regulation and policy at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. “You may see headlines about unexpected job gains,” Dumas said, “but I think the underlying headline people are not going to talk about is the fact that Black workers decreased by 179,000.”
The BLS reported that the number of private-sector and government jobs rose by 115,000 in April, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.3%, but the Joint Center’s April Jobs Day analysis, based on that BLS release, found that the unemployment rate for Black workers rose from 7.1% in March to 7.3% in April and estimated that the number of Black workers employed fell by 179,000 last month.
In April, the unemployment rate for white workers was 3.7%, compared to 5.0% for Hispanic workers and 3.3% for Asian workers, the BLS reported. At 7.3%, Black unemployment remained nearly double the white rate. The Joint Center’s analysis shows the unemployment rate for Black men fell from 7.9% in March to 7.6% in April, while the rate for Black women rose from 6.3% to 6.9%.
“If you look at it, you can do a breakdown,” Dumas said. “Black women increase by 6.6 percent, and Black men decrease by, I’d say, 2 percent, 2.3 percent, so, it kind of evened out there. I think the main thing to take away from this is that you’re going to hear a lot about how the economy is stable, about how the economy added 115,000 jobs, exceeding the forecast, but I want to point out to you that Black workers’ employment decreased by 179,000, so even though the headline is ‘Better-than-expected job gains,’ that headline doesn’t necessarily mean employment gains for Black workers.”
Month-to-month changes can also mask how the labor market shifts beneath the surface, Dumas warned, especially when policy and business decisions take time to show up in hiring. “You don’t really see the repercussions from a positive change until months after, right? You see things quarterly. It’s hard to see any major changes month to month,” he said.
The largest increase was among young Black workers: According to the Joint Center analysis, their unemployment rate climbed from 12.3% in March to 13.4% in April; the overall youth unemployment rate increased from 8.2% to 8.5% over that period. Dumas said it is too early to look at those numbers and predict what will happen during the summer hiring period, “but it’ll be interesting to see,” he said, “when the June jobs report comes out in July, what the youth unemployment rate will be.”
Where the jobs are and where they’re decreasing
BLS said April job gains were concentrated in health care, transportation and warehousing, and retail trade, while federal government employment continued to decline. In an interview with the AmNews, Dumas pointed to losses in parts of the information economy, including telecommunications, as one place to watch, while the overall labor market is still leaning on health care as a steady source of jobs.
“Telecommunications lost 3,000 jobs: information-sector employment is down 7% since its peak in 2022. The major industries — mining, oil and gas, construction — didn’t see much change, so I think it was probably just telecommunications. And that’s one of those industries that could be affected by automation. I think health care is still where we’re getting hired or maintaining our jobs.”
