Black unemployment remained high in May

The good news (or not so bad news) is that the black unemployment rate fell slightly in May. But the tiny decline from 15 percent to 14.9 percent was hardly a cause for celebration while the figure was still 5.5 percentage points higher than the overall unemployment rate for all Americans.

The bad news was that overall unemployment soared to 9.4 percent. But even that startling figure was tempered by the unexpectedly high reduction in monthly jobless claims.

Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 345,000 in May, which on the surface is bad news because hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs last month. But that number is about half the average monthly decline for the past 6 months, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported. Monthly job losses had far exceeded that number for most of the year.