I pulled the official numbers from the BLS Employment Situation release (Table A-2) and charted the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (%) for selected months.
Selected months (SA):
• White: 3.8 (Nov ’24) → 3.7 (Jul ’25) → 3.7 (Aug ’25) → 3.8 (Sep ’25) → 3.9 (Nov ’25)
• Asian: 3.8 → 3.9 → 3.6 → 4.4 → 3.6
• Black: 6.4 → 7.2 → 7.5 → 7.5 → 8.3
Source (BLS): https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm
TL;DR: This is what the official data shows for unemployment by race across those months.
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0 sats \ 16 replies \ @Undisciplined 17 Dec
It's also interesting to look at labor force participation.
Black labor force participation increases but employment holds flat. So, the increase in unemployment is coming from people who had not been in the labor force previously.
The opposite happened with whites. Labor force participation declined and employment was flat. So the unemployment rate didn't increase because people just dropped out of the workforce.
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0 sats \ 15 replies \ @jamalderrick OP 17 Dec
Chart 1 shows that’s not accurate:
Black workers: Employment grew from ~20,500k to ~21,050k (July to Nov). Labor force grew even more (22,400k to 23,000k). So employment increased, just not fast enough to absorb new entrants.
White workers: Employment actually declined slightly (~123,850k to ~123,450k) while labor force stayed flat.
Chart 2 shows the scale: Black unemployment rose 19.2% (employment +2.7%, labor force +3.9%). White unemployment rose 4.1% (employment -0.1%, labor force flat).
Both saw unemployment rise through different mechanisms, but the magnitude is drastically different.
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0 sats \ 14 replies \ @Undisciplined 17 Dec
I was talking about the same YoY that you had been
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69 sats \ 13 replies \ @jamalderrick OP 17 Dec
Yes! The YoY deterioration in Black unemployment is really striking when you look at the data. November 2024 was 6.4%, November 2025 is 8.3%.
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0 sats \ 12 replies \ @Undisciplined 17 Dec
It is but my point is that a lot of that increase is coming from the decrease in how many were out of the labor force, rather than from those who were employed.
This usually means people are unsuccessfully trying to find work. I don't have any idea why that shift would have happened during the past year.
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0 sats \ 11 replies \ @jamalderrick OP 17 Dec
BLS A-2 shows Black labor force ↑ ~892k from Jul→Nov 2025, but employment also ↑ ~584k (not flat) while unemployed ↑ ~308k. So yes, more people entered the labor force, but it’s both more employed and more unemployed, not “instead of employment."
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0 sats \ 10 replies \ @Undisciplined 17 Dec
That's the population growing. From Nov-Nov, the employed share is almost exactly the same: 58.5 vs 58.6.
The unemployment rate went up because less of the increased population was out of the labor force entirely.
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0 sats \ 9 replies \ @jamalderrick OP 17 Dec
You and I already went through this debate on the Black women employment data. #1291753 We clearly interpret the labor force dynamics differently.
Your argument here (that employment-population ratio stayed flat at 58.5 vs 58.6) doesn’t address why the unemployment rate itself spiked from 6.4% to 8.3% for Black workers while White unemployment barely moved (3.8% to 3.9%).
Labor force participation explains the mechanism, but it doesn’t explain the disparity in magnitude, which is what my chart shows.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @unboiled 17 Dec
No October numbers?
Also, how likely is it that the newer numbers will be revised significantly?
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @jamalderrick OP 17 Dec
October numbers are missing due to the federal government shutdown, noted in the chart title. BLS couldn’t collect the data.
As for revisions: BLS does revise monthly employment data, but unemployment rates by race are typically stable in revisions. The seasonal adjustment factors can shift slightly, but a 6.4% → 8.3% change is far too large to be explained by statistical revision. That’s a real 1.9 percentage point increase.
For comparison, the 2008 financial crisis saw Black unemployment rise about 5 percentage points over 18 months. A 1.9pp increase in one year is significant and won’t be revised away.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @unboiled 17 Dec
Ah, I failed the chart title reading comprehension test. Thanks for clearing that up.
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