Black unemployment shatters another historic low

The unemployment rate among black Americans reached 5.5% in August – a historic low. That’s down from 6% the month before and 0.4 percentage point below the previous record in May 2018.

Black unemployment has been breaking records since December 2017, when it dropped to 6.7%. That was the first time the rate broke below the 7% mark, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which reaches back to 1972. The only time the rate even hit 7% before 2017 was in April 2000, for a single month, shortly before the dot-com bubble burst.

The record is somewhat counteracted by the labor-force parti...