(Newswire.net — Aug 21, 2013) Washington, DC — The Labor Department reported earlier this week that unemployment was up in at 28 states, and declined in just 8. Hiring did increase in 32 states, the Department noted, and primarily in western and southern states like California and Florida. Meanwhile seventeen states, including Nevada and New Jersey, lost the most.
Across the nation, hiring has been slow but steady, taking a brief downturn last month. Around 162,000 jobs were created in July, but this was actually the smallest number of jobs added since March of this year. The national unemployment rade fell to 7.4 percent, which is a 4.5 year low.
This year, California and Texas have lead the way in job creation, with Texas adding a totla of 293,000, and California behind them with 236,000. Unemployment in California has fallen from 10.6 percent 12 months ago, down to 8.7 percent – the biggest 12 month drop of any state, but still leaving them above the national average.
The other bad news, according to the Pew Research Institute, is that there has been little to no shift in the disparity in unemployment rates between African-Americas and Caucasians. Since 1963, with few exceptions, the “black unemployment is consistently twice that of whites,” reported Drew Desilver, writing for Pew. “The unemployment rate among blacks is about double that among whites, as it has been for most of the past six decades.”
Duke University’s William A Darity, Jr., has gone on record saying that blacks are “the last to be hired in a good economy, and when there’s a downturn, they’re the first to be released.” A 2010 study from UC Santa Cruz confirmed at least the former part, but cast some doubt on the latter.
Meanwhile, a slight uptick in minorities entering home-based businesses has been noted in some studies. Many start consulting firms for areas like design or photography, and others join Network Marketing Companies like LegalShield or PureLeverage. State’s Calvin Jones of Washington, DC., “Sometimes, you can’t depend on other people to pay you – you have to take matters into your own hands.”
Time will tell if the unemployment discrepency will change.