Unemployment for Hispanic workers again plumbed a new record low in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.
The unemployment rate for Hispanic or Latino workers fell to 4.5 percent in the month, lower than the previous record of 4.6 percent that was set just the month before.
Unemployment for minorities has fallen to historical lows as the jobs recovery has extended into a ninth year. The recovery has also benefited other groups who typically are at the margins of the economy. For example, jobless rates for high school dropouts also hit a record low in July.
Yet although minority unemployment has plumbed new lows during Trump’s tenure, the recovery also predates his presidency. It’s been falling fairly steadily since 2011.
President Trump touted the unemployment numbers Wednesday in a meeting with inner-city pastors at the White House.
“So important, because we have companies, once again, coming back into our country, and they want to employ people,” he said. “So we’re training and working with these people, and we’re getting companies to do the same. It’s been — actually, it’s been a very beautiful thing.”
Yet economists at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-of-center research organization, said that the government should try to drive unemployment even lower for minority groups, noting that they are not yet seeing robust wage gains and are still suffering an unemployment gap with white workers, for whom joblessness is just 3.4 percent.
“A tighter labor market would disproportionately benefit black and Hispanic workers,” wrote the economists Valerie Wilson and Jessica Schieder.
