According to the Economic Policy Institute, “The U.S. economy is in a strong position in the second quarter of 2024, even though the labor market is softening compared with previous quarters. The national unemployment rate rose to 4.0% in 2024 Q2, up from 3.8% in the first quarter. D.C. and California had the highest overall unemployment rates at 5.3% and 5.2% respectively, while North and South Dakota maintained the lowest unemployment rates, both at 2.0%.

Job reports through the second quarter of the year saw slight upticks in the unemployment rate from month to month, even as the labor market continued to add jobs. . .

Second-quarter 2024 trends among Black workers 

Kentucky was once again the only state with a Black unemployment rate above 10.0% in the second quarter of 2024, rising to 11.3% from 10.4%. D.C.’s Black unemployment rate was just under 10.0% at 9.9%. Among those states with large enough sample sizes for precise estimates, Maryland once again had the lowest Black unemployment rate at 3.4%, up from 3.3% in the previous quarter. South Dakota and Vermont had lower unemployment rates at 3.1% and 3.3% respectively, but those states have relatively low sample sizes that make estimates less precise. The national Black unemployment rate rose once again to 6.3% from 6.0%.

The national Black-white unemployment ratio for 2024 Q2 remained at its usual rate of 2.0-to-1, meaning that nationally once again Black job seekers were twice as likely to not find work as their white counterparts. D.C. maintained its position of having the highest Black-white unemployment ratio, though that ratio fell again in the second quarter of the year to 4.0-to-1 from 4.2-to-1. Nevada and Delaware had the lowest Black-white unemployment ratios among states with sufficient sample size for precise estimates with a ratio of 1.5-to-1—meaning Black workers were 50% more likely than white workers to be unemployed in those states. Hawaii technically had a lower Black-white unemployment ratio at 1.4-to-1, but that state has a relatively low sample size of Black workers. There are still no states where Black and white workers are equally likely to be unemployed.”

DC’s Extreme Wealth Concentration Exacerbates Racial Inequality, Limits Economic Opportunity

According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), DC has an outsized concentration of extreme wealth relative to its overall population, according to a new report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). DC makes up 0.2 percent of the country’s population but has 0.5 percent of the nation’s extreme wealth – which the report defines as net worth over $30 million. Just 0.4 percent of DC tax units (roughly 1,500 households based on the number of tax filers in 2019) have net worth over $30 million, and these same tax units hold nearly half (46 percent) of all wealth in the District.  

Extreme concentration of wealth creates extreme inequality that both reflects and exacerbates racial inequality and limits economic opportunities for the majority. Across the nation, 92 percent of families holding extreme wealth are white, non-Hispanic families. This is more racially skewed than the distribution of wealth overall, of which 87 percent is held by white families. In DC, white households have 81 times the wealth of Black households and 22 times the wealth of Latinx households. [MORE]