Thread by @Peoples_Pundit

It's not really true current black unemployment trends began under Barack Obama.

It was as high as 14.2% as recently as June 2013, hit resistance at ≈ 8%, and only ↓ as labor force participation ↓.

Under Donald Trump, unemployment ↓ as participation rate ↑. Big difference.

Trying to be nice here. But the trend is clear. That's how BLS methodology works. The unemployment rate falls if people exit the labor force and the participation rate declines. When it still declines as people enter the labor force, it's a much stronger labor market, it's real.

It's also worth pointing out the increase in black participation and overall is happening, or at least happened so far under Trump, despite demographic pressures. Most analysts agreed demographic changes were partially to blame for falling participation rates under Obama.

On the 1st tweet, I uploaded labor participation rate chart for the entire population, and meant to upload the chart for African Americans, too. It's even more convincing, really drives home the argument.

Here it is (dark blue) juxtaposed to the entire population (dark red).

We can clearly see in the uploaded chart that--under Mr. Obama--participation was on a downward trend, which only arrested after. It looked to make a recovery, but failed several times. Notice the sharp drops coincide with dips in the unemployment rate, inc. in his final year.

Lastly, it's important to remember that those last few months had post-election optimism baked into the cake. Hence, the 0.3% bump from December 2016 to January 2017.