America's job market is softening. A benchmark survey released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows over 900,000 fewer jobs in the 12 months before March of this year.
"If you're thinking about your own job security, if you are thinking about looking for work, this is a situation that doesn't give you any added confidence and might serve to undermine that,” said Mark Hamrick, a senior economic analyst at Bankrate.
A deeper look at the data shows Black Americans are facing those employment headwinds the most.
The unemployment rate for Black Americans is the highest it's been since October 2021, now sitting at 7.5%. That is more than twice the unemployment rate for white Americans, which is currently at 3.7%.
Black unemployment is historically seen as a bellwether when it comes to the U.S. economy.
“It is in those marginal groups that you see the kind of shifts in the economy, particularly downward shifts, hitting those communities first,” said Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
Black Americans make up 13% of the nation's workforce, but job losses in certain sectors could be having an outsized impact on the unemployment rate for Black Americans.
“I think there is some assumptions or hypotheses around cuts in government deployments, cuts in some of the areas that blacks are disproportionately located in, including manufacturing, some aspects of hospitality,” said Asante-Muhammad. “I think all of that is making African Americans who are often times some of most employed insecure.”
Experts say young Black workers are especially impacted by rising unemployment. That's also reflected in the unemployment rate in general for young people ages 16-24, which is now more than 10%. That’s more than twice the current 4.3% overall unemployment rate.
