(The Root) By: Lynette Holloway
The Labor Department released its August jobs report today, showing that the nation’s employers added 169,000 jobs last month, just slightly below what economists had predicted. The overall unemployment rate fell to 7.3 percent from 7.4 percent, but mostly because people dropped out of the labor pool and were no longer being counted as unemployed, the New York Times reports.
In some bad news for the black community and President Obama, the overall unemployment rate for African Americans rose to 13 percent, up from 12.6 percent in July. After steadily rising since April of this year, the African-American unemployment rate had finally decreased in July from 13.7 percent, reaching its lowest rate since the president took office, when it was also 12.6 percent.
The overall unemployment rate for whites in August fell to 6.4 percent from 6.6 percent and dipped slightly for Hispanics to 9.3 percent from 9.4 percent, the report shows.
Read the details of the Labor Department’s jobs report here.
Read more at the New York Times
