Latino unemployment rate drops to 6.3 percent
By Victor Landa, NewsTaco
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its December employment numbers this morning, and economists are calling the report stellar.
[tweet_dis]There were 1,655,000 unemployed Latinos in the U.S. in December of 2015, a drop from 1,682,000 in November. [/tweet_dis]It was enough of a change to drop the month-to-month Latino unemployment rate from 6.4 to 6.3 percent. It stands out because the national unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.0 percent, even though [tweet_dis]292,000 jobs overall were added to the economy last month.[/tweet_dis]Unemployment numbers are tricky to parse.
Economists had anticipated that 215,000 jobs would be added to the economy, so today’s numbers were well above the expectation. But the national percentage didn’t chang for a good reason: more people who had given up looking for work were encouraged enough to seek and find employment.
In traditional Latino employment sectors:
- 136,000 construction jobs were added in December.
- 129,000 agriculture jobs were added (there are now 1 million farm, fishing and forestry workers in the country)
- The service sector lost 160,000 jobs.
Today’s report follows a positive trend.
Forbes reports that “Revisions to payroll counts from October and November were also net positive. The gain for November, first recorded at 211,000, was revised up to 252,000. Meanwhile the October count was revised higher to plus 307,000 from the most recent reading of 298,000.
“Net total job gains in October and November were therefore 50,000 above what BLS previously reported. Monthly job gains over the past three months have averaged 284,000.”
The reports, some analysts say, supports the Federal Reserve’s call to raise the interest rate in December.
[Photo by Alan Kotok/Flickr]
