July’s jobs report shows Black teens struggling with the highest unemployment rate

The Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report for July, released last week, showed a continuation of the steady economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic for most demographic groups in the U.S.—but not Black teenagers, for whom the unemployment rate increased from 9.3% in June to 13.3% in July.

Nationally, 943,000 jobs were added last month, and the unemployment rate declined by 0.5 percentage points, to 5.4%. While July’s job increase is promising, the number of people who are not in the labor force but who currently want a job is at 6.5 million—up from 6.4 million in June and 1.5 million higher than in February 2020. These people are not counted in the unemployment rate because they had not actively looked for work within the last four weeks or were unavailable to take a job. As the recovery continues, we would expect the labor force participation rate to increase.

Racial disparities in the labor force participation rate and unemployment rate continue to affect the state of employment. While white workers’ labor force participation rate increased from 61.3% in June to 61.6% in July (with a corresponding decrease in the unemployment rate, from 5.2% to 4.8%), the labor force participation rate for Black workers dipped from 61.6% in June to 60.8% in July. While unemployment rates also decreased for Black workers, this decrease in large part reflects the decrease in the labor force, as the total number of both employed and unemployed Black workers decreased. Black workers—in particular, Black teens—are experiencing the highest unemployment rates.