In a reversal of general unemployment trends, for the month of February, the unemployment rate for Black men over 20 years old plunged to 5.5% from its 6.9% rate in January, while the overall unemployment rate ticked up from 4% to 4.1 percent.
According to CNBC, the jobless rate for Black workers overall dropped from 6.2% in January to 6% in February, and although Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, indicated that the full effect of the government layoffs are not yet reflected in the data, and that unemployment numbers are generally volatile from one month to the next, the positive numbers for Black men cannot be ignored.
“It’s the calm before the storm,” Gould told CNBC
. “We’re not seeing the layoffs in the data yet, for the most part. You see a fair amount of volatility month-to-month. It’s a little hard to ignore the huge drop in the unemployment rate for Black men…that’s a positive indication.”According to Rick Rieder, the chief investment officer of global income at BlackRock, the payrolls report from the reporting survey of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has a “load of footnotes.”
Rieder continued, “For instance, the reporting survey was conducted following a period of significant job displacement in California related to the wildfires and other adverse weather conditions around the U.S., in the midst of a changing immigration picture, more labor strikes, and the beginning of the impact of DOGE on federal government employment.”
Although the data does not break down jobs held by ethnicity, it does indicate that healthcare and social assistance, financial activities, construction, transportation and warehousing, and government are the highest positive net change jobs from January to February, a further indication that the cuts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency are not included in the data yet.
According to Reuters, the data indicates that there are cracks in the labor market that are beginning to show thanks to the chaos introduced by the Trump administration’s trade policy and federal spending cuts that have marked Donald Trump’s first month in office.
Per
their reporting, the share of American workers holding more than one job is the highest that it’s been since the Great Recession, and economists indicated that the unpredictable trade policy makes it difficult for businesses to plan ahead, reflected in the slowed rate of hiring in the private sector.Among private sector jobs, those companies only added 77,000 jobs in February.
According to a report from payroll processing firm ADP, which released in advance of the BLS report, those numbers are well off the pace of the 186,000 jobs projected to be added in January and the 148,000 jobs that the Dow Jones estimate projected.
According to Nela Richardson, ADP’s chief economist, employers are hesitant to increase hiring as they wait for the economic landscape post-tariffs to become clear.
“Policy uncertainty and a slowdown in consumer spending might have led to layoffs or a slowdown in hiring last month. Our data, combined with other recent indicators, suggests a hiring hesitancy among employers as they assess the economic climate ahead,” Richardson told CNBC.
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