The Labor Department has released the August jobs report and the unemployment figured was unchanged from July’s  9.1 percent. In addition, the economy added only 17,000 new jobs. The African-American jobless rate climbed from 15.9 to 16.7, which only strengthens the argument of Black lawmakers that there is a critical need to specifically address this problem.

The unemployment rate for Black males rose a whole percentage point to 18.0 percent and the rate for Black youths aged 16–19 jumped from 39.2 to 46.5 percent.

According to William Darity, an economist at Duke University, the Black unemployment rate may be in part attributed to more people feeling less discouraged about finding employment and reentering the workforce to jumpstart their job searches, Still, he says, it is also a sign of the discrimination that continues to exist in the labor market.

Georgia Tech Thomas Boston agrees that’s a part of the problem, particularly given the fact that Blacks comprise just 12 percent of the labor market but 22 percent of the unemployed. He also said that the unemployment burden is shifting from whites to African-Americans whose job losses are almost equal to white job gains.

“Part of it also is where Blacks are situated in the market. They have the kinds of jobs that are the first to be affected when the economy sneezes,” Boston explains. “We also have an economy that isn’t creating jobs for people with low levels of education and Blacks are heavily concentrated in that group. All of this points to an historical pattern of discrimination, which puts Blacks in a situation where they’re the first to experience downturns in the economy.”

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WASHINGTON — The unemployment rate dropped sharply last month to 9 percent, the lowest level in nearly two years. But the economy generated only 36,000 net new jobs, the fewest in four months.

The January report illustrates how job growth remains the economy’s weakest spot, even as other economic indicators point to a recovery that is strengthening.

African-American unemployment remained virtually stagnant going from 15.8 to 15.7 percent and the still high black teen figure actually ticked up from 44.2 to 45.4.

Friday’s report offered a conflicting picture on hiring. Unemployment fell because the Labor Department’s household survey determined that more than a half-million people without jobs found work. The department conducts a separate survey of businesses, which showed tepid job creation. The two surveys sometimes diverge.

Severe winter weather likely reduced the number of jobs created. Harsh snowstorms last month cut into construction employment, which fell by 32,000, the most since May. Transportation and warehousing also fell by 38,000 — the most in a year.

In one bright spot, manufacturing added 49,000 jobs, the most since August 1998.

The unemployment rate has fallen by eight-tenths of a percentage point in the past two months. That’s the steepest two-month drop in nearly 53 years.

But part of that drop has occurred as many of those out of work gave up on their job searches. When unemployed people stop looking for jobs, the government no longer counts them as unemployed.

The number of people unemployed fell by more than 600,000 in January to 13.9 million. That’s still about double the total that were out of work before the recession began in December 2007.

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Emily Weinstein graduated from college into an economic meltdown, and as a self-employed jewelry maker she’ll be lucky to bring in $16,000 this year.

Heath insurance is out of reach, so she avoids thinking about what would happen if she got sick, was hurt in a traffic accident or was severely burned while making a silver necklace in her home studio.

“Would I have to declare bankruptcy at age 23 or would my parents have to bail me out?” asked Weinstein, of Portland, Ore. “What would I do?”

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While the nation as a whole sees a more modest increase in unemployment, the Black unemployment rate has gone up almost 2 percent.

The jobless rate for Blacks jumped from 13.3 percent in March to 15 percent in April, according to seasonally adjusted numbers from the Bureau of Labor statistics.

In comparison, the rate for Whites increased slightly from 7.9 percent to 8.0 and the rate for Hispanics decreased from 11.4 percent to 11.3. The overall unemployment rate for the United States increased from 8.5 percent to 8.9 percent during the same time period.

A closer look at the figures reveals that Black men are outpacing all subgroups over the age of 20 with a jobless rate of 17.2 percent, an increase from 15.4 percent in March. With the unemployment rate of 11.5 percent in April, Black women saw a jump of about 1.5 percent from March.

The private sector was hit hard too, with 611,000 reported job losses last month, according to a release from the Bureau of Labor statistics.

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