The demographics of the unemployed – October 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: 7.0% (improved)
- Asians: 8.9% (improved)
- Hispanic: 10.3% (improved)
- Black: 12.1% (improved)
And by gender:
- Men – 7.4% (improved)
- Women – 7.7% (improved)
For the second straight month the news couldn’t have been much better. Every group benefited from the job gains in September with Asians and Blacks making the biggest gains overall - exactly where we need the most improvement. This illustrates important points regarding the recovery. It’s no longer uneven. We had record low unemployment rates for all minority groups prior to the pandemic and we’re tracking back in a positive direction with all minority groups benefitting from the recovery. 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 September. There clearly remains a significant disconnect in the economy based on ethnicity, with Blacks having an unemployment rate, though we've now seen for two consecutive months that they have benefitted the most from the recovery. That’s highly encouraging. In the third part of today’s look at the employment report, we’ll look at how much money we’re making.