Blacks doing worse in US job market

African-Americans are twice as likely as whites to be unemployed in the United States, the National Urban League says in its latest State of Black America report.

According to the annual report, called “One Nation Underemployed: Jobs Rebuild America,” the unemployment rate for blacks was 12 percent in February, compared to 5.8 percent for whites.

For African-American workers, the underemployment rate was 20.5 percent, the report said, compared to 18.4 percent for Hispanic workers and 11.8 percent for white workers.

“Many Americans are being left behind and that includes African-Americans and Latinos who are being disproportionately left behind by the job creation that we see,” National Urban League President Marc Morial said.

This year’s equality index for African-Americans stands at 71.2 percent, compared to last year’s index of 71.0 percent, the National Urban League said. The economic portion of the index dropped to 55.5 percent from 56.3 percent.

When it comes to income equality and unemployment equality, the report ranked large American cities from most equal to least equal.

The most income equal city for blacks was Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif., where the median black household income was $44,572, while the median white household brought in $57,252, the report said.

The US labor market has faced serious problems in recent years, a study found last month. The findings by Alan Krueger, a former White House economist and two of his colleagues at Princeton University, shows only 11 percent of long-term unemployed people in the US will ever regain steady full-time employment.

Long-term unemployment, defined as joblessness extending longer than six months, has been one of the defining features of the 2007-09 US recession.