Black workers are enjoying a jobs boom in America

It is a grim fact of American life that black people have long lagged well behind white folk in the world of work, with higher unemployment, lower wages and a larger share giving up on job searches altogether. A much more hopeful fact is that many of these inequalities now appear to be shrinking. In the half-century before the covid-19 pandemic, the black unemployment rate was on average twice as high as the white one. At the end of last year jobless rates were, respectively, 5.2% for black Americans and 3.7% for white people—equalling the narrowest gap on record.