Wisconsin tops nation in black joblessness, study finds

Unemployment among African-Americans in Wisconsin last year was the highest of any of the 50 states, according to a study released Thursday by the center-left Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

At 19.9% — or 1 in 5 working-age people — the black unemployment rate in Wisconsin is nearly three times higher than the highest state white unemployment rate (7% in Nevada) and significantly higher than the national black unemployment rate of 11%, the think tank found.

Wisconsin's black unemployment rate is twice the overall national unemployment rate at the peak of the recession — 9.9% in the fourth quarter of 2009.

The findings are consistent with more than a decade of statistics and studies that show that African-Americans in Wisconsin and its largest city, Milwaukee, often find themselves at the economic and social extremes compared with the rest of the nation. That has been the case with a broad range of social distress indicators, from infant mortality and poverty to high school dropouts and incarceration.