But until last month, one stark detail remained unpublished: Native Americans saw their jobless rate soar even higher than any of these groups to a staggering 28.6% that April.
While the monthly jobs report regularly breaks out the unemployment rate for Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White Americans, data specific to Native Americans — classified by the agency as American Indians and Alaska Natives — has never been included.
Given the comparatively small population of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the US, the sample sizes of survey respondents meant that the monthly data collected from the Department of Labor and Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey was volatile and not adequately reliable, the BLS explained. So the data was instead included in broader annual and semi-annual reports on topics such as race and ethnicity.
“We examined the estimates to see if publishing the monthly data would add to the understanding of…
