Blacks ameliorating

Short-term note: click here & here for the Lottery research recently shown as Most Popular in the Washington Post.

A number of statistical data have been analyzed during this economic recovery, which has been underway for over 7 years now (and having started with massive amounts of government stimulus).  Among them is the differences around the globe in the economic and psychological recovery based on racial groups.  This is a topic that Professor Angus Deaton and many others noted have contributed to the rise in mortality among middle-aged White males (here, here).  And others (from academic researchers to national policy advocates) have suggested may be at the stem of racial dissonance among sections of the community (here, here).  While the national labor data doesn't provide granular break-downs to capture all of the dimensions we would want to see (in fact since 2003 some of the disparate race data has been removed from the official records), it is still interesting to see the broad patterns on how much the major race categories -which we do measure- have fared.

 

What we see in the table above is that Blacks started the recession with worse employment/population ratio and unemployment.  However, relative to Whites and Asians (note Hispanics and Native Americans are not broken out), they have seen both the most significant rebound in employment, and the most significant reduction in unemployment.  With our visibility into the data here, the economic picture is not better versus prior to the recession, however looking only at employment measures such as above, it is moving in the right direction particularly for Blacks.