The demographics of the unemployed – September 2020
Bottom Line: The demos of the unemployed tell a much more specific story about what's really going on in our labor market. As I do monthly, here are the government reported unemployment rates based on demographics:
- White: 7.3% (improved)
- Hispanic: 10.5% (improved)
- Asians: 10.7%(improved)
- Black: 13% (improved)
And by gender:
- Men – 8% (improved)
- Women – 8.4% (improved)
The news couldn’t have been any better. Every group benefited from the job gains in August with Hispanics and Blacks making the biggest gains overall - exactly where we need the most improvement. Moreover, for the first time in the history of BLS employment tracking, the Hispanic unemployment rate is lower than the Asian unemployment rate. Given the demographics of South Florida – this bodes especially well going forward.
There’s clearly a lot of work still to do to put all people back to work, great progress was attained across the board again in August. There clearly remains a significant disconnect in the economy based on ethnicity, with Blacks having an unemployment rate, though August provided the most encouraging overall trends yet. There’s even more room for optimism as September’s landscape is improved over August because of a slowing down in coronavirus cases.
In the third part of today’s look at the employment report, we’ll look at how much money we’re making.