Is Black Unemployment Really Declining?

The black unemployment rate dropped to just above 13 percent last month, the second-lowest number since President Obama took office in 2009. That rate is still much higher than America's overall unemployment rate for April 2012, 8.1 percent. And as Politics365 reports, lowering the African-American unemployment rate has been such a struggle that some people are looking at these new numbers with skepticism. But are their suspicions warranted?

From Politics365:

After a big drop in the Black unemployment rate in January — the biggest since March 2009 — Black unemployment appears to be improving greatly. In January 2012, the Black unemployment rate was tabulated to be 13.6% by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It was 15.8% in December of 2011. In February, 227,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy yet the Black unemployment rate rose to 14.1% from 13.6% ...

When the Black jobless rate improved in January no one could figure out why. Rep. Allen West (D-FL) said the numbers were suspect at the time. “If the national average only went down two tenths of a percentage point then how could — all of these 240,000 new jobs must have come from in the Black community…” West said at the time. Could the books have been cooked? ”No way,” said senior CBC member and former Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Towns (D-NY). “There are way too many people involved,” he added.

Read more at Politics365.

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