Latino unemployment dips to 5.9%
Victor Landa, NewsTaco
Today, The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced its count of unemployed persons for the month of January and said that [tweet_dis]151,000 new jobs were added to the nation’s economy last month[/tweet_dis]; the [tweet_dis]U.S. employment rate now stands at 4.9 percent[/tweet_dis], a drop of .1 percent since December.
[pullquote][tweet_dis]Latino unemployment is at 5.9%[/tweet_dis][/pullquote]For Latinos the news was also positive with a reported 5.9 percent unemployment. A year ago, in January of 2015, the unemployment rate for U.S. Latinos was 7.2.
Here’s the strange thing. [tweet_dis]There are 25,000 more unemployed Latinos today than there were last month.[/tweet_dis]
It’s tricky, but the reason the rate dipped while the number increased is that there are more Latinos looking for work, and that’s a good thing. It means that more people feel hopeful about the economy, and many who had given up looking for work are back looking again.
A deeper dive gives some still sobering news:
- Unemployment for 16 to 19 year-old Latinos and Latinas is at 18%.
- For Latinas 20 years-old and over, it’s 5.9.
- For Latinos 20 and over, it’s 4.9.
- There are still 1.5 million unemployed Latin@s.
- 13.7 million Latin@s are not in the labor force.
[Photo by levin.house.gov]
