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Unemployment spiked for Black men in January as more joined the labor force

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Jobseekers talk to recruiters during the New York Public Library’s annual Bronx Job Fair & Expo at the Bronx Library Center in the Bronx borough of New York, US, on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024.

Yuki Iwamura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Unemployment among Black men surged in January as the number of those looking for work increased, according to data released Friday by the Department of Labor.

In January, Black workers saw their jobless rate edge higher to 6.2% from 6.1% in the month prior. This trend bucked the overall unemployment rate for the country, which ticked down to 4.0% in January from 4.1% in December. Asian Americans were the only other demographic to see a rise in jobless rates to 3.7% from 3.5%.

On the other hand, unemployment for white and Hispanic workers followed the overall trend and fell in January from the prior month. For the former, it decreased to 3.5% from 3.6%. For the latter, it fell to 4.8% from 5.1%.

But Black men experienced the biggest month-to-month spike in unemployment, with their jobless rates surging to 6.9% from 5.6%. On the other hand, the unemployment rate held steady at 5.4% for Black women.

While Hispanic men also saw their jobless rate hold steady at 4.0%, unemployment rates for their female counterparts dropped to 4.5% from 5.3%. The unemployment rate also fell for white men to 3.1% from 3.3% and marginally decreased to 3.3% from 3.4% for white women. The data breakdown by sex was not readily available for Asian Americans.

While the spike in unemployment rate for Black male workers certainly looks alarming on the surface, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics made some changes to their population controls and survey tools in January that makes it hard to compare the data to previous months, according to Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. Gould also potentially attributed the surge to standard data volatility.

“I think you would need to see a few months of that elevation, and not just a blip in the data, to think that there was something sinister going on,” she told CNBC. Still, “obviously, just the simple fact that it’s so much higher than other groups is a systemic problem in and of itself.”

Gould added that part of the rise in unemployment rate for Black men could be due to the fact that more of the cohort joined the job market in January.

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%.

Among black workers, the rate rose to 62.5% from 62.4%. The rate jumped to 69% from 68.2% for Black men, while slightly increasing to 62.5% from 62.4% for Black women.

“When the unemployment rate rises, but there’s also an increase in participation, that can often mean that people are more optimistic or coming back in the labor market looking for jobs,” Gould added.

Among white workers, the labor force participation rate rose to 62.3% from 62.2%. Within Asian workers, the participation increased to 64.7% from 64.3%, and slipped among Hispanic workers to 66.8% from 67.5%.

– CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report.

Economics

Andrew Bailey on why UK-U.S. trade deal won’t end uncertainty

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Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey attends the central bank’s Monetary Policy Report press conference at the Bank of England, in the City of London, on May 8, 2025.

Carlos Jasso | Afp | Getty Images

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey told CNBC on Thursday that the U.K. was heading for more economic uncertainty, despite the country being the first to strike a trade agreement with the U.S. under President Donald Trump’s controversial tariff regime.

“The tariff and trade situation has injected more uncertainty into the situation… There’s more uncertainty now than there was in the past,” Bailey told CNBC in an interview.

“A U.K.-U.S. trade agreement is very welcome in that sense, very welcome. But the U.K. is a very open economy,” he continued.

That means that the impact from tariffs on the U.K. economy comes not just from its own trade relationship with Washington, but also from those of the U.S. and the rest of the world, he said.

“I hope that what we’re seeing on the U.K.-U.S. trade side will be the first of many, and it will be repeated by a whole series of trade agreements, but we have to see that happen of course, and where it actually ends up.”

“Because, of course, we are looking at tariff levels that are probably higher than they were beforehand.”

Trump unveils United Kingdom trade deal, first since ‘reciprocal’ tariff pause

In Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Report released Thursday, the word “uncertainty” was used 41 times across its 97 pages, up from 36 times in February, according to a CNBC tally.

The U.K. central bank cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point on Thursday, taking its key rate to 4.25%. The decision was highly divided among the seven members of its Monetary Policy Committee, with five voting for the 25 basis point cut, two voting to hold rates and two voting to reduce by a larger 50 basis points.

Bailey said that while some analysts had perceived the rate decision as more hawkish than expected — in other words, leaning toward holding rates elevated than slashing them rapidly — he was not surprised by the close vote.

“What it reflects is that there are two sides, there are risks on both sides here,” he told CNBC.

“We could get a much more severe weakness of demand than we were expecting, that could then pass through to a weaker outlook for inflation than we were expecting.”

“There’s a risk on the other side that we could get some combination of more persistence in the inflation effects that are gradually working their way through the system,” such as in wages and energy, while “supply capacity in the economy is weaker,” he said.

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Economics

Trump knocks down a controversial pillar of civil-rights law

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IN THE DELUGE of 145 executive orders issued by President Donald Trump (on subjects as disparate as “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness” and “Maintaining Acceptable Water Pressure in Showerheads”) it can be difficult to discern which are truly consequential. But one of them, signed on April 23rd under the bland headline “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy”, aims to remake civil-rights law. Those primed to distrust Mr Trump on such matters may be surprised to learn that the president’s target is not just important but also well-chosen.

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Economics

Harvard has more problems than Donald Trump

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A Programme at Harvard Divinity School aspired to “deZionize Jewish consciousness”. During “privilege trainings”, working-class Harvard students were instructed that, by being Jewish, they were oppressing wealthier, better prepared classmates. A course in Harvard’s graduate school of public health, “The Settler Colonial Determinants of Health”, sought to “interrogate the relationships between settler colonialism, Zionism, antisemitism, and other forms of racism”: Will these findings by Harvard’s task-force on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias, released on April 29th, shock anyone? Maybe not. Americans may be numb by now to bulletins about the excesses, not to say inanities, of some leftist academics.

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