Friday, March 29, 2024

Mr. President, Can You ‘Fix This’ Before You Leave? (12.2 M African Americans No Longer in Labor Force)

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*It’s startling to know that the latest statistics from the Dept. of Labor shows that even with corporate profits growing exponentially, nearly 100,000 more Americans on net dropped out of the labor force in September.

Some of this is due to natural retirement of baby boomers, but a lot of it is due to workers just giving up finding the job they want.  That’s a record. And it means that the labor force participation rate has dropped to 62.7 percent, a level not seen since February 1978.

Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.

Even more disturbing is that a record 12.2 million African Americans are no longer in the labor force. Why? Could be they don’t have a job or they gave up actively looking for one in the four weeks prior to the report, which was published on Friday. There are several reasons why attention should be paid to this even after so many years of record breaking unemployment in the Black community.

One thing is that if the true unemployment rate remains at depression levels, you can say goodbye to any hope of an increase in average hourly earnings.

In March, the unemployment rate for black people was 10.1 percent, that’s almost double the overall national unemployment rate, as it has been for decades. And a record high 56.1 million women were not even participating in the labor force last month.  But the truly heartbreaking thing is…

People are losing hope with regard to finding work; and subsequently, a vast number of Americans have given up and are dropping out of the labor market.

Article continues at EURThisNthat.

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