For Immediate Release: April 28, 2011
Contact: Phoebe Silag or Karen Conner, news@epi.org 202-775-8810

African American unemployment in Mississippi is significantly higher than white unemployment, a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Issue Brief finds.  In 2010, the average unemployment rate for African American Mississippians was 18.0%, while the average unemployment rate for white Mississippians was 6.4%.  African American Mississippians also experienced unemployment higher than the national African American unemployment rate, which averaged 15.9% in 2010.  At the beginning of the Great Recession, the unemployment rate for African Americans in Mississippi was 10.7%.

Distressed Mississippi: Unemployment rate for African American workers is significantly higher than that for whites by EPI researchers Douglas Hall and Algernon Austin also explains that the high rate of unemployment among African American workers is particularly disturbing in light of the fact that 37% of the state’s population is African American.