A job seeker holds flyers during the New York Public Library's annual Bronx Job Fair & Expo at the Bronx Library Center in the Bronx borough of New York, USA, on Friday, September 6, 2024.
Yuki Iwamura | Bloomberg | Getty Images
According to data released Friday by the Labor Department, the unemployment rate for white Americans rose slightly in October.
In October, the unemployment rate for white Americans rose to 3.8% from 3.6% the previous month. This trend contradicted the country's overall unemployment rate, which was stable at 4.1% in October and September, as well as in other population groups.
Unemployment rates for black and Hispanic workers remained unchanged last month at 5.7% and 5.1%, respectively. The unemployment rate for Asian Americans fell from 4.1% to 3.9%.
On the other hand, unemployment rates for both white men and women rose slightly in October. For men it rose from 3.4% to 3.5%. For women it rose from 3.1% to 3.3%.
While the unemployment rate for Hispanic women rose from 4.8% to 5.2%, the unemployment rate for their male counterparts fell from 4.1% to 4.0%. The unemployment rate also fell for black women from 5.3% to 4.9%, while for black men it rose from 5.1% to 5.7%.
For Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, this increase points to the distortion and volatility of the monthly data, especially considering that the unemployment rate for black men fell to 5.1% in September from 5.9% in August .
“I think that the big spike that we saw in black male unemployment in October was actually just a renormalization after the big, unusual decline in September,” she told CNBC.
Shierholz added that October's unemployment numbers were also unusually affected by the hurricanes and labor strikes, making comparing these data points even more difficult.
“You never want to focus on one month's data, and that's true now more than ever because this month's data was so distorted by these unusual temporary factors,” she said.
In October, the overall labor force participation rate – the percentage of the population that is either employed or actively looking for work – fell to 62.6% in October from 62.7% in September.
For white workers, the labor force participation rate also fell slightly in October to 62.2% from 62.4% the previous month, while for Hispanic workers it fell to 66.9% from 67.4%. Among Asian workers, participation rose to 65.5% in October from 65.3% in September, while among Black Americans it remained stable at 62.9%.
—CNBC's Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report.
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