Black unemployment nearly double white rate

The nation's unemployment rate climbed to 6.5 percent last month, the Labor Department reported on Friday. But the black unemployment rate remained substantially higher at 11.1 percent, nearly double the rate for whites.

The 6.5 percent overall rate marked a 14-year high in joblessness and was creating a huge impact on ordinary Americans as 240,000 jobs were cut in October, far worse than economists expected, according to the Associated Press.

In total, 1.2 millions jobs were lost this year, making October the tenth consecutive month in which the economy reported job losses. But blacks have been particularly hard hit by the troubled economy.

African Americans posted the highest unemployment rate of any racial or ethnic group in the survey, according to the Labor Department. The October unemployment rate, not seasonally adjusted, for whites was 5.9 percent, for Hispanics 8.8 percent and for Asians 3.8 percent, but for blacks it was 11.1 percent.

The 11.1 percent rate for blacks was higher than the group's average for the first quarter (9.1) or the second quarter (10.6) but slightly lower than the September rate of 11.4 percent.