African-American jobless rate surges as overall unemployment rate holds
By Emily Jane Fox, CNNMoney
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) - As the overall U.S. unemployment rate stayed at 8.2% in June, the rate among black Americans rose nearly a full percentage point.
The reason for the increase appears to have been a rise in the percentage of African-Americans looking for a job, rather than job losses.
The unemployment rate for blacks rose to 14.4% from 13.6% in May, the Labor Department reported Friday. That's a sharp contrast to the white unemployment rate, which stayed put at 7.4%, and the Hispanic rate, which held at 11%.
This trend is not a new one, as the black unemployment rate has been roughly double that of whites since the government started tracking the figures in 1972.
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