Writing in The Guardian, Jana Kasperkevic points to a compelling theory advanced by Valerie Wilson at the Economic Policy Institute. Black unemployment is high, Wilson suggests, not only because black joblessness is high (for reasons well documented in Ta-Nehisi Coates's recent Atlantic cover story), but because black people are more resilient when it comes to sticking to their job search.
The key to understanding Wilson's point is knowing that unemployment doesn't measure the number of people who are, well, "unemployed" in a conventional sense of the word—without a job. What the unemployment rate measures is how many people are actively looking for work. If someone gives up on his or her search, he or she is no longer counted as unemployed. In May, Kasperkevic writes, "there were over seven million Americans who want a job but were not counted as part of the labor force."