Fifty years after the "dream" of racial equality invoked by Martin Luther King at the March on Washington, the reality is that African-Americans still suffer the most unemployment.
Government statistics show the overall US unemployment rate stood at 7.4 percent in July.
But while whites had a jobless rate of 6.6 percent last month, the rate was nearly double for blacks at 12.6 percent.
By comparison, the Hispanic, or Latino, minority fared better, with 9.1 percent unemployed.
Asian-Americans were the least affected by the woes in the US labor market after the Great Recession; only 5.7 percent lacked jobs.
"Discriminations against African-Americans are still very pervasive, it's a major force of the economy," Heather McGhee, vice president of Demos, a Washington-based think tank on equal rights, told AFP.
The yawning gap between majority whites and blacks is nothing new and has persisted through periods of economic expansion and recession.
