When Federal Reserve policy makers gather this week to discuss the U.S. economic recovery from the pandemic, they’ll see a job market that’s improving at a faster pace for some than for others.
The dashboard of indicators Fed Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues have said they are watching to determine how far the country is from reaching their maximum employment mandate shows White and Asian Americans with college educations are faring better than everyone else.
The U.S. central bank’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee meets Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss where policy is headed next. Last year, Fed officials redefined their goal of full employment as an “inclusive and broad-based” one.
Labor Department reports for the months of April and May, published since the last FOMC meeting, have been disappointing relative to forecasters’ expectations. Fed policy makers have said the figures indicate the job market is still a long way off from the “substantial further progress” they’ve outlined as a condition to begin scaling back monetary support.
Here are some of the data that Powell has pointed to as a gauge of the economy’s strength.
Unemployment Rates
As of May, despite some improvement across racial and ethnic groups, Black and Hispanic Americans continued to face lower employment rates than White and Asian Americans relative to pre-pandemic levels.
The employment-to-population ratio for White Americans was three percentage points below where it was in February 2020 and for Asian Americans it was down 2.8 percentage points. But for Black Americans, it was 3.9 percentage points lower and for Hispanic or Latino Americans it was 4.5 percentage points below pre-pandemic levels.
The employment disparities between racial and ethnic groups are largely concentrated among women.
Employment-to-Population
For Black or African American and Hispanic or Latino women, employment-to-population ratios were still more than five percentage points below February 2020 levels—whereas for White American women, the ratio was down just three percentage points.
By comparison, employment-to-population ratios for White and Black American men have rebounded to a similar place—both 3.6 percentage points below pre-pandemic levels in May. The ratio for Hispanic or Latino American men was down 4.3 percentage points.