The Trump administration’s winning record on Hispanic unemployment finally received a long overdue nod of recognition from top national Spanish-language media outlets Univision and CNN en Español.
As unemployment among the nation’s largest minority group fell for the second consecutive, record-setting month, both Univision and CNN en Español trumpeted the news in their principal national evening news programs.
ILIA CALDERÓN, ANCHOR, NOTICIERO UNIVISION: There is good news for Hispanic workers in the United States. The unemployment rate continues to fall. In the month of July, which just ended, Hispanics registered a 4.5 percent unemployment level compared to 4.6% in June. That difference of one tenth of a percentage point means that last month 38 thousand new jobs were created for Hispanics.
JUAN CARLOS LÓPEZ, ANCHOR, CNN EN ESPAÑOL: Moving on to good news for President Trump and for the economy. The President likes this one. Unemployment fell again. The unemployment rate remained at 3.9% in July, after the creation of 157 thousand jobs. For Hispanics, it went from 4.6 to 4.5%.
However, the fact that tens of thousands of Hispanics across the country entered the workforce and got jobs last month was not news on Telemundo, Univision’s main rival in U.S. Spanish-language television. For the second month in a row, the principal national evening news program on Telemundo, along with those of lesser rivals Azteca América, Estrella TV and NTN24, all failed to include the news that Hispanic unemployment continued to dip to the lowest levels ever recorded, since the U.S. Department of Labor first started keeping records on the statistic, back in 1973.
The U.S. now has more jobs available than people considered unemployed. Even economists at the left-of-center Economic Policy Institute have acknowledged that a tighter labor market disproportionately benefits black and Hispanic workers. Along with a worker-friendly job market, the government’s latest statistics indicate that wage growth also continues to outpace inflation.
As Craig Bannister of CNSNews noted, the latest numbers from the Department of Labor indicate that during July 2018 the number of Hispanics employed in the United States reached a new high of 27.2 million (up over 100,000 from 27.1 million in June). The country’s overall unemployment rate also fell to 3.9% in July, tracking near the 18-year-record low of 3.8% reached in May 2018.
