According to the recently released U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, the national seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for Hispanics and Latinos in the U.S. labor force fell to the lowest level on record in June of 2018.
Whether this has to do with the influence of President Donald Trump or is a residual effect leftover from the Obama administration will be on the minds of many until future jobs data are revealed. But regardless of the overall reason, the news is good for Latinos.
The statistics can be broken down further by age. In June, the unemployment rate for Hispanics and Latinos, aged 16 and up, was 4.6%, down from its May level of 4.9%. Before June’s record, the lowest monthly Hispanic-Latino unemployment rate since BLS began tracking the statistic in 1973 was 4.8%.
The records indicate that the Hispanic-Latino unemployment rate has been at 4.8 percent before for a total of five months. Of those five months total, four have been during the administration of President Donald Trump. Further, the data show that during the 17 full months of the Trump administration, beginning in February 2017, Hispanic-Latino unemployment has averaged 5.0%.
During the President Barak Obama administration, the record shows that for the Hispanic-Latinos in America, the unemployment rate averaged 9.4 percent. To be fair, the country experienced a recession in 2008 during President Obama’s 96-month term in office, an event that certainly impacted unemployment figures across the board. The recession officially ended in June of 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017, at which time the Hispanic-Latino unemployment rate was at 5.9 percent. These latest figures indicate that the unemployment rate for this group has dropped a full percent during the first year and a half of President Trumps term. There are certainly many factors for this drop in the unemployment rate, but we can only hope it continues.