Jobseekers attend the JobNewsUSA.com South Florida Job Fair held at the Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida, on June 26, 2024.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
The unemployment rate for women in white, Black and Hispanic racial groups rose in June in line with the overall trend, according to data released Friday by the Department of Labor.
In June, white adult women saw their unemployment rate rise to 3.1% from 3.0% the month prior. The jobless rate similarly increased for Black and Hispanic women to 5.7% from 5.2% and 4.5% from 4.1%, respectively.
This trend was in line with the overall unemployment rate, which edged higher to 4.1% from 4.0% last month.
On the other hand, the unemployment rate fell for men in all three racial groups. The rate ticked down to 3.2% from 3.4% for white males, while falling to 4.2% from 4.7% for Hispanic men. Jobless rates also declined to 6.1% from 6.4% for Black men, although the category still has the highest unemployment rates among all the demographic groups.
“We’ve seen a lot of gains for women in this pandemic, in this recovery — a lot of notable highs that they’ve experienced. They hit historic all-time highs in terms of their employment in the labor market. But we did see some softening among women in June, and that was accompanied by this rise for men,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
However, Gould noted that it’s curious this rise in female unemployment last month corresponded with an influx in jobs in health care and social assistance, which are traditionally not thought of as male-dominated fields.
The unemployment rate for white workers in general stayed steady at 3.5%. This number fell to 4.9% from 5% for Hispanic workers but rose to 6.3% from 6.1% for Black Americans and 4.1% from 3.1% for Asian Americans. The jobless rates for Asian workers separated by gender were not readily available.
Last month, the labor force participation rate — the percentage of the population that is either employed or actively seeking work — ticked higher to 62.6% from 62.5% in May.
Among white workers, the rate steadied, while it fell to 62.7% from 62.9% for Black Americans. This compares with the labor force participation rate for Asian and Hispanic workers, which respectively rose to 65.9% from 65.3% and 67.5% from 67.3%.
— CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report.
Austan Goolsbee, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, speaks to the Economic Club of New York in New York City, U.S., April 10, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Business owners and CEOs are already stocking up on inventory, and some American shoppers are panic buying big-ticket items in anticipation of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The sudden buying binge could cause an “artificially high” level of economic activity, said Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee.
“That kind of preemptive purchasing is probably even more pronounced on the business side,” Goolsbee told CBS’ “Face The Nation” on Sunday, adding: “We heard a lot about preemptive building-up of inventories that could last 60 days, 90 days, if there [was] going to be more uncertainty.”
Businesses stockpiling inventory and consumers accelerating their purchasing decisions — buying an Apple iPhone now, say, rather than waiting until the fall — may inflate U.S. economic activity in April and lead to a slowdown in the coming months, Goolsbee suggested.
“Activity might look artificially high in the initial, and then by the summer, might fall off — because people have bought it all,” he said.
Sectors affected by Trump’s tariffs, particularly the auto industry, are most likely to heavily stock up on inventory now before import levies on goods from other countries potentially rise further, said Goolsbee. Many car parts, electronic components and other big-ticket consumer items are manufactured in China, for example, which currently faces a 145% total tariff rate on goods imported to the United States.
“We don’t know, 90 days from now, when they’ve revisited the tariffs, we don’t know how big they’re going to be,” Goolsbee said.
Some U.S. business owners who buy goods manufactured in China say they already can’t afford to place rush orders on inventory. Matt Rollens, owner and CEO of Granite Bay, California-based novelty drinkware company Dragon Glassware, says he’s temporarily holding his products in China because paying the 145% levy would force him to raise consumer prices by at least 50%, likely drying up customer demand.
Rollens has enough inventory in the U.S. to last roughly until June, and hopes the tariffs will be rolled back by then, he told CNBC Make It on April 11.
Short-term uncertainty and financial pain aside, the Fed’s Goolsbee expressed optimism about the country’s longer-term economic outlook.
“If we can get through this, it’s important to remember: The hard data coming into April was pretty good. The unemployment rate [was] around steady full employment, inflation [was] coming down,” he said. “It’s just a desire of people expressing they don’t want to back to ’21 and ’22, at a time when inflation was really raging out of control.”
IN HIS LOVE of lucre Donald Trump can be crass. In their pursuit of efficiency, free marketeers can be, too. Consider the sale of citizenship. Most people dislike the idea of treating national belonging as a commodity. Yet about a dozen countries hawk passports and more than 60, including America, offer residency in exchange for an investment or donation. Its “golden-visa” scheme is cumbersome, under-priced and inefficient. On this point the president and the market agree.