Kashkari plans on pressing for more research by central-bank economists on racial disparity in the labor market.
Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said Wednesday he was “shocked” that the persistently higher national black unemployment rate relative to the rate for whites was not better understood.
“There is a really troubling statistic in the U.S. economy where black unemployment is almost always twice white unemployment,” Kashkari said in a conversation at the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation charity in St. Paul.
“If it is a booming economy, and white unemployment is 4[%], then black unemployment is 8[%]. If it is a recession and white unemployment is 8, black unemployment is 16,” Kashkari said.
“What’s shocking to me is we, as a country, still don’t know why that is. We have to know why that is if we hope to solve it,” he said.
Kashkari said he would press the “world class research capabilities at the Minneapolis Fed and Fed system” to understand why blacks are being left behind “and hopefully Congress…can get involved.”
The Fed president, who has been in office since the beginning of the year, said he was surprised by the racial disparity in his district.
“To be blunt, whites doing really well. But then there are huge gaps to people of color, in general, around Minnesota,” he said.
