Commuters arrive at Oculus Station and the mall in Manhattan on November 17, 2022 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | beautiful pictures
The U.S. unemployment rate overall fell in December, but rose for Black women and Hispanic men, according to the latest nonfarm payrolls report.
Black women saw the unemployment rate rise to 5.5% last month, up 0.3 percentage points from 5.2% in November, data from the Labor Department showed Friday. Overall, Black employment held steady at 5.7%, while the unemployment rate for Black men actually dropped to 5.1% from 5.4% the previous month.
Meanwhile, the Latino male unemployment rate rose to 4% in December, up 0.4 percentage points from 3.6% the previous month. The overall unemployment rate increased from 4.0% to 4.1%. Unemployment among Latino women also increased from 3.6% to 3.7%.
These numbers went against the trend in the broader economy, showing the unemployment rate in the US falling to 3.5% from 3.7%. It was 0.2 percentage points below consensus expectations from Dow Jones.
“What we’ve really seen in the nearly three years since the pandemic hit is that we’ve gotten back, overall, all the jobs that were lost,” said Michelle Holder, a member of the Board of Directors. famous senior fellow at the Institute said. Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
“But the industrial mix has changed and has impacted what we’re seeing in terms of the distribution of unemployment, by sex, race and ethnicity. And that really drives Black women. and Latinx men are not satisfied,” Holder added.
The better-than-expected December jobs report continues to show a strong labor market, even as softer-than-expected wage growth prompted some investors to hope that inflation could ease. .
Nonfarm payrolls rose 223,000 in December, more than the Dow Jones estimate of 200,000. Meanwhile, average hourly earnings rose 0.3 percent on the month and 4.6 percent from a year ago. These are compared with 0.4% and 5% increase estimates.
“The labor market is clearly still strong,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “We are now seeing that the household survey and the wage survey are showing similarly strong signs and wage growth looks to be slowing down.”
However, parts of the economy where black women are the majority have shown little improvement or have not returned to pre-pandemic levels, according to Holder. Government employment was little changed, adding just 3,000 jobs in December. Notably, state government education employment fell 24,000 because of university staff strikes, according to the Labor Department .
According to Holder, both Black women and Latino men are well represented in the entertainment and hospitality sectors. The sector added significant jobs in December, but remained below pre-pandemic levels. Employment in this sector increased by 67,000 last month, but remained at 932,000, or 5.5%, lower than in February 2020.
“Those are two industries that haven’t recovered well during the pandemic,” Holder said. “This is what is limiting Black women’s ability to go back to the status quo they were in the American workforce before the pandemic.”
