The Black unemployment rate fell to a record low of 5.9 percent in May, dipping dramatically by more than half a percentage point from April.
This new number is the lowest since the government started keeping track in 1972.
President Donald Trump will likely take credit for the new numbers. He wrongly boasted at this year’s State of the Union address that his administration had lowered the Black unemployment rate.
“And something I’m very proud of, African-American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded,” Trump said.
However, the Black unemployment rate has been on a steady decline since 2011, according to Vox. This movement can be attributed to President Barack Obama’s administration. Plus, Trump’s administration hasn’t exactly been clear about which of their policies or practices are aiding in this decline.
The new numbers also indicate that the gap between Black and white unemployment has never been smaller, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The gap shrank to 2.4 percentage points, the first time on record it’s been less than 3 points, CNN reports.
“Looking at the trend for African-Americans, it is very clear that their unemployment rate has fallen markedly over the past seven years,” Evan Cunningham, an economist at the BLS,said. “The decline thus far in 2018 looks to be a continuation of this same trend.”
There are still some negatives: The rate for black teens is 19.8%, substantially higher than the 11.6% unemployment rate for white teens. And the rate for Black men over the age of 20 is 6.3%, compared with just 4.7% for Black adult women and 3.2% for white men over the age of 20.