Unemployment rates are higher for young people, minorities | Video | PBS NewsHour | PBS: HARI SREENIVASAN: We wanted to follow up tonight on yesterday’s monthly unemployment report. Our focus this evening, a persistent problem; how unemployment affects young people and people of color disproportionately. Here to help unpack it is Nela Richardson, a Senior Economist from Bloomberg. So everyone pays attention to that top line 6.6 percent, when you kind of look under the hood though, it’s worse depending on where you look. So let’s look at race, for example. White Americans have an unemployment rate of about 5.7 percent and African Americans are more than twice that figure at 12.1 percent. Any primary causes?
NELA RICHARDSON: Well, you see that doubling of the unemployment rate between blacks and whites at every educational level and it’s particularly dramatic when you look at the youth population. There’s several reasons, Hari. One, it’s the fact that you know, blacks graduate at lower levels than white students do. So we know that college education is a huge factor in determining the level of unemployment, so that employment disparity is a big driver. Secondly, youth and African American youth tend to be employed in sectors that are very business cycle sensitive. So when the general economy is doing bad, that sector gets worse and it’s worse for this particular population.
