NPR.

It's Jobs Friday, which is that time of the month where we check in on the latest official

jobs report.

And today's report is kind of mixed.

So on the one hand, the economy added about 340,000 jobs last month.

Way more than expected.

On the other hand, the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.7% and about 440,000 people lost

their jobs.

And here's something particularly concerning about that.

If you break down by demographic group who lost jobs about half of them are black.

Michelle Holder is a labor economist at the City University of New York.

So it may be the case that we're beginning to see the first kind of brush strokes of

the Fed's actions to tame inflation.

And when the economy begins to contract, there are certain groups historically that begin

to feel it first.

Now, what's a bit confusing about this latest data point is that it comes just a month

after the black unemployment rate hit a historic low.

This is the indicator for plan of money.

I'm Adrian Ma.

And today on the show, we make sense of the seemingly contradictory indicators.

We'll talk about how recent data on black employment is both encouraging and a sign

that this country still has a lot of work to do.

...