The unemployment rate among black Americans reached 5.5 percent in August—a historic low. That’s down from 6 percent 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 percent. That was the first time the rate broke below the 7 percent mark, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, which reaches back to 1972. The only time the rate even hit 7 percent before 2017 was in April 2000, for a single month, shortly before the dot-com bubble burst.
