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Milestone: The unemployment rate for Black Americans has reached a new low

Milestone: The unemployment rate for Black Americans has reached a new low

David Crowther

Milestone

‍New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that the unemployment rate for Black workers in the US fell to a record low in April, dropping to 4.7% — the first time the figure has fallen below 5% in recorded history.

That follows the wider American unemployment rate, similarly sitting at a multi-decade low of 3.4%. It also means that the gap between the Black and white unemployment rate narrowed to 1.6%, the smallest it’s been since records began in the 1970s. The new lows have been underpinned by some exiting the labor force, however, according to Bloomberg analysis.

Indeed, while the new sub-5 figure is down a whopping 12.1% from its peak back in May 2020, the labor force participation rate also slipped by more than a percentage point from the month before. Indeed, 63% of Black Americans were currently employed or looking for work in April, compared to 64.1% the month before.

‍Go deeper: explore the BLS’s latest job report here.

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The most watched soccer match in US history got less than a third of the views the Super Bowl did

Between a top-spot finish in the group stage, a sweeping performance against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the round of 32, and the president’s controversial intervention, Monday evening’s USMNT game against Belgium had, to put it lightly, shaped up into a box-office clash.

And though the US players’ performance on the pitch might not have lived up to the high drama off it, American soccer fans certainly showed up. According to early estimates, the 4-1 defeat against Belgium was the most watched soccer telecast in US history, hauling some 40 million viewers on average across the coverage on Fox and Telemundo.

That may be a record tally in the US for the sport that much of the world calls some variant of “football” — besting the 36.2 million who tuned in to watch the team’s previous knock-out match — but it’s still peanuts in comparison to the sport that shares the same name in the States.

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