Volatility Blamed for February's Increase in Unemployment Among Black Men

Experts argue that the long-term jobless rate continues to decline

By Frederick H. Lowe
The nation's businesses added 227, 000 new jobs in February, but the overall unemployment rate remained at 8.3 percent, the same as last month because more than 500,000 adults entered the workforce due to improved job prospects.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for black men and African Americans overall, however, increased in February, compared with January.

The jobless rate for black men 20 years old and older during February was 14.3 percent, compared with 12.7 percent in January, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday.

However, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for black women 20 years old and older actually improved in February, compared with January. Last month, the jobless rate for black women was 12.4 percent, compared with 12.6 percent in January.

Overall, the seasonally adjusted jobless rate for black men and women 20 years old and older in February was 14.1 percent, compared with 13.6 percent in January.

Heidi Shierholz, a Ph.D labor-market economist with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, explained that joblessness in the black community jumped in February, compared with January, because the African- American unemployment rate most likely is volatile.  This occurs because African Americans comprise a small sample within the Current Population Survey, a joint project between the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of the Census.

The survey interviews approximately 60,000 households each month.  The results capture the behavior of 110,000 individuals. Each individual is assigned a “weight” based on certain demographic characteristics. A weight is a rough estimate of the number of actual persons the sample person represents.

The number of African Americans in the survey sample is much smaller than the number of whites, and this smaller sample size always will produce more volatile results, according to the University of California at Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.

Because of the monthly volatility of African-American unemployment rates, the University of California Center argued that it is much better to examine the movement in unemployment rates over a three- to six-month period, than to look at monthly differences.

The university, which publishes “Work in the Black Community,” noted that February's unemployment among African Americans declined dramatically from December 2011 when the seasonally adjusted jobless rate was 15.8 percent.
In December 2011, the seasonally adjusted jobless rate for black men 20 years old and older was 15.7 percent. During the same month, the seasonally adjusted jobless rate for black women was 13.9 percent.

February's unemployment rate among African Americans is much higher when compared with whites. Among white men 20 years old and older, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in February was 6.9 percent. For white women 20 years old and older, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in February was 6.8 percent.

The unemployment rate represents the percentage of the civilian labor force that is unemployed, defined as individuals who did not have jobs and had actively looked for work in the last month.

Shierholz said she was “heartened” by February's jobs' numbers. The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit policy organization, said this is the third month in a row that employers have created more than 200,000 jobs.

Shierholz added that the economy would  have to create 350,000 jobs per month for the next three years to reduce the jobless rate to 4.6 percent, the average rate during 2007 before the Great Recession.