U.S Unemployment Rate Stands At 7.9%

Ahead of the presidential elections in the United States of America, the labour department has on Friday announced that the unemployment rate in the country fell to 7.9% in September.

The department said about half of the jobs lost in the early months after COVID-19 hit the US have been recovered, but the recovery in the jobs market has been uneven, disproportionately benefitting white men.

Meanwhile, young people, women, Latino and Black Americans have continued to struggle to make up lost ground. The unemployment rate for white people was 7% in September, for black people it was 12.1% and for Latinos it was 10.3% while the teenage unemployment rate was 15.9%.

According to the last snapshot of the jobs market, though unemployment has fallen sharply since hitting a historic record of 14.7% in April after the coronavirus pandemic shut down the US, the rate is still far higher than the 4.8% when Trump took office in January 2017.

It was gathered that the current level marks the worst job loss that any president has faced going into an election based on records going back to the second world war.