Latino unemployment rose slightly in August

Victor Landa, NewsTaco

There was more riding on today’s unemployment numbers than in months past.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics tell us that we’ve just been through two of the biggest jobs growth months in years. June saw an increase of 292,000 jobs and July saw an increase of 255,000. But economists didn’t hold such high hopes for August. The estimate, going in to September, was that the monthly jobs number would be around 180,000.

That’s an important number because the Federal Reserve was keeping a close eye on jobs, ready to act to cool the economy if it continued on its heated path.  The thinking was the 200,000 was the threshold number. At that point the Fed would raise interest rates by the end of this month. But no such thing happened. August’s job growth set at 151,000, the rate remains at 4.9 percent and the Fed is holding fast.

For Latinos there wasn’t a hold.

The month-to-month employment rate for U.S. Latinos slipped a little from 5.4 in July to 5.6 in August. There was no increase in jobs to speak of, the number of unemployed Latinos rose by a 81,000 – from 1,438,000 in July to 1,519,000 in August.

For Latinas the rate increased from 5.3 to 5.8. There are 635,000 unemployed Latinas in the U.S., and there are 170,000 unemployed  Latin@s between 16 and 19 years of age.

Part of the problem is that there were 202,000 more Latin@s looking for work this month than there were last month, some of those job seekers were new and others re-entered the labor force.