{"id":20236,"date":"2021-09-01T00:00:06","date_gmt":"2021-09-01T00:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/?p=20236"},"modified":"2025-10-06T20:08:42","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T20:08:42","slug":"differences-in-unemployment-rates-by-educational-attainment-race-ethnicity-and-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/2021\/09\/01\/differences-in-unemployment-rates-by-educational-attainment-race-ethnicity-and-sex\/","title":{"rendered":"Differences in Unemployment Rates by Educational Attainment, Race\/Ethnicity, and Sex"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Unemployment Rates by Educational Attainment, Race\/Ethnicity, and Sex<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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In our previous blog post<\/a>, we introduced a dataset from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that includes unemployment rate data broken out by educational attainment level. That post explored the national data from the BLS’s Current Population Survey (CPS) that have been published on a monthly basis since 1992 showing the average unemployment rate for persons 25 years and older in the United States. The monthly data showed that higher levels of educational attainment serve somewhat as a <\/span>“recession-proofing” mechanism<\/b><\/span>, as the effects of recessions are less profound for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher than for adults included in the other categories of educational attainment.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Exploring Unemployment Data by Demographic Variables<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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This blog post continues to use data published from the CPS<\/a>\u00a0that include unemployment rates reported by a variety of demographic variables. While the previous analysis showed data spanning almost 30 years, the <\/span>unemployment data<\/span>\u00a0disaggregated by<\/span>\u00a0demographic variables and educational attainment levels has only been reported since 2015. These data are reported as annual averages by the BLS,\u00a0<\/span>so the following analysis will include six years of trend data.\u00a0<\/span>Because the data presented are unemployment rates, the better-performing groups have lower unemployment rates.<\/i><\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Unemployment Rate Comparisons by Race\/Ethnicity and Educational Attainment<\/u><\/div>\n
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The first visualization below shows differences in unemployment rates by race\/ethnicity at an overall level, and\u00a0<\/span>then broken out by the five educational levels included in the BLS data: “Less Than a High School Diploma”, “High School Graduate, No College”, “Some College, No Degree”, “Associate Degree”, and “Bachelor’s Degree or Higher”.<\/span>\u00a0When compared with the differences along gender lines shown later in the blog, there is greater variance in unemployment rates when we explore the data across these four race\/ethnicity categories in the BLS data: Asian American, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, and White. The general trend across all groups is the same, with improving unemployment rates from 2015 to 2019 before fairly dramatic shifts to higher unemployment rates in 2020.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Across the top row, the\u00a0Overall<\/span>\u00a0averages<\/span>\u00a0from 2015 to 2020 show that adult Americans of Asian descent and White adults have approximately the same six-year average unemployment rate: 4.1% for Asian Americans and 4.2% for Whites. The average unemployment rate for Hispanic\/Latino Americans increases to 5.4%, while Black\/African-Americans have an unemployment rate of 7.8% for the six years in the data. If we follow the trendlines from 2015 to 2019, the rank-ordering remains the same, before the annual average for Asian Americans increases to the same as Hispanic\/Latinos in 2020.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Moving down the rows of educational attainment lends further support to the general finding from our previous blog post:\u00a0<\/span>increasing educational attainment improves unemployment rates for all adults in the data<\/span><\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0This is especially true for persons of color.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0For example, the average unemployment rate for Black or African American adults with less than a high school diploma is 13.2%, as compared to the average unemployment rate of 3.8% for Black adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher. This 9.3-percentage point difference is more than double the difference for White adults in the data (4.2 percentage points), almost triple the difference for Asian Americans (3.3 percentage points), and more than triple the difference for Hispanic\/Latino American adults (3.0 percentage points).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Increased credentials also help close gaps between race\/ethnicity groups within educational attainment levels<\/span>. For the adults with less than a high school diploma, the six-year average difference between the highest and lowest unemployment rate was 7.9 percentage points, whereas the average difference between the highest and lowest unemployment rates in the bachelor’s degree or higher category is 1.4 percentage points\u00a0across the six years<\/span>\u00a0in the data. For those adults with at least a bachelor’s degree, the smallest gap between highest and lowest unemployment rates in a single year was in 2019, with Black\/African American adults 0.8 percentage points higher than White adults (2.8% vs 2.0%). Even though all educational levels experienced worse unemployment rates in 2020, the gaps were narrower based on higher levels of educational attainment. The highest difference was 6.1 percentage points in the less than high school diploma group, while there was a 2-percentage point difference between highest and lowest rates in the bachelor’s degree or higher group.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

NOTES<\/u>: If you are unable to read the labels in the visualization below, we recommend clicking the \u201cFull Screen\u201d button on the lower right of the visualization window to enlarge the information. Hovering over each point will provide a tooltip with additional information.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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