White House: Increase in Black Unemployment ‘Statistically Insignificant’ But It Did Significantly Increase in May

During an interview on Bloomberg on Friday, White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jared Bernstein stated that the increase in the black unemployment rate “was statistically insignificant in June,” but the increase in black unemployment in May was statistically significant.

Co-host Romaine Bostic asked, “Well, what about some demographics? Our International Economics Correspondent Michael McKee pointed this out to me, that, when you look at unemployment rates in terms of demographics here, it went down for white men, it went down for white women, but it went up for blacks, it went up for Hispanics, and it went up for those who only have a high school education or less.”

Bernstein responded, “Well, if you look at some of those demographic categories — as you should, and I applaud Michael for doing that — you really do have to take account of the fact that these are some very noisy indicators. They jump around a lot from month to month. And in fact, the increase in black unemployment, BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) will tell you that was statistically insignificant in June, but that wasn’t the case in May, where it did grow. But that’s off a 4.7% trough, that’s, I think, among the lowest black unemployment rate[s] on record. So, the smart thing there to do is to take the average for the quarter, the black unemployment rate for Q2 is 5.4%. … That’s tied for the lowest quarterly rate on record.”

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