North-Star News
As with December’s unemployment report, African Americans won’t find much solace in the employment-population ratio, which provides a more-accurate measure of joblessness than the better-known unemployment report.
The employment-population ratio represents the percentage of the population that is employed, and it can be interpreted as the probability that a member of the population is employed, according to the University of California at Berkeley’s Work in the Black Community.
“It captures employment prospects better than the unemployment rate, since jobless individuals who are not in the labor force, including discouraged workers, are not calculated in the employment rate,” said officials of Work in the Black Community, which is part of the U.C. Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.
Work in the Black Community reported that employment-population ratios for black men and women 20 years old and older dropped in December.
The employment-population ratio for men was 58 percent, down from 58.3 percent in November. It was a same story for women in the same age group. The employment-population was 54.7 percent, compared with 55.1 percent in November.
The employment-population ratio for black teenagers 16 to 19 years old was mixed. Boys reported an employment-population ratio in December of 12 percent, down from 15.1 percent in November.
Girls reported employment-population ratio in December of 17.8 percent, down from 17.7 percent in November.
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