Election boost for Trump but black Americans missing out

Donald Trump’s re-election chances look much stronger today than they did a month ago as he hailed an “amazing” recovery in US jobs, even though the figures show that black Americans have missed out on the revival.

May’s 2.5m rise in hires was lauded by the president as “stupendous” and “joyous”, but that boast showed a tin ear to a week of protests following the death of George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis.

While the bounce back from the worst month ever for job losses confounded the forecasters – indeed some called it the biggest data shock in history – the unemployment rate among black Americans actually rose from 16.8pc to 16.9pc, the highest since 1984. That was in contrast to the overall rate, which fell to 13.3pc.

What the figures do is ram home the huge challenges faced by the US’S black population, a group more likely to be in lower-paid jobs, less likely to have health insurance and hence prone to underlying conditions. That’s why they account for a disproportionate share of the US’S 110,000 Covid-19 deaths and are dying at almost three times the rate of whites.

Even if protests weren’t taking place in dozens of major cities, a more sober US president may not have found a double-digit unemployment rate something to boast about. The May recovery in the jobs market – while stunning – after all represents barely more than a tenth of the record 20.7m people thrown out of their jobs in a devastating April for the world’s biggest economy.

Employment remains 13pc below its February level. The footnotes of the figures show that if workers recorded as employed but absent from work due to “other reasons” had been classified as unemployed, the overall jobless rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported.

Trump was quick to pat himself on the back for the numbers, but the US’S flexible labour market deserves much of the credit, with leisure, construction and retail firms rehiring workers steadily as the lockdown is lifted across America.

That said, if the jobs revival continues at this present stellar rate, rather than lurching into Depressionera unemployment, momentum could return to the president’s side when it comes to the election in November.