Last week, a positive U.S. jobs report raised hopes for many Americans. But the report wasn't positive for everyone.
Two-and-a-half million jobs were added in May, the largest monthly gain since the Labor Department started keeping track in 1939. While the agency admitted some inaccuracies in the report actually indicated a small rise in unemployment, the numbers were still better than economists predicted.
The jobs report showed a drop in White and Hispanic unemployment, but Black and Asian Americans didn't see the same gains.
For Black workers, unemployment remained at almost 17% — the highest level in almost 10 years. Asian unemployment stayed at around 15%, the highest since at least the 1940s.
An economist told The Hill that the disparity isn't surprising. She said many experts predicted "that white workers would be absorbed at a faster rate, and therefore we would start to see the gap between black and white unemployment increase again.”
