Unemployment and education

CNN just posted some fascinating statistics from the Dept of Labor about how the unemployment rate correlates to what education you have. Here are the current unemployment levels for each category of education level achieved:

Some high school: 13.3%
HIgh school grad: 9.0%
Some college 7.2%
Bachelor's degree: 4.3%

Now, statistics are funny things. It's possible that education level is also related to race, or gender, or socio-economic class, and perhaps THAT is the factor affecting employment most. For example, there was an earlier segment on CNN showing that minorities were facing more unemployment than whites.

Asians 6.4%
Whites 7.9%
Hispanics 11.4%
Blacks 13.3%

It's possible that minorities are losing their jobs, or not getting jobs, more often than whites because of prejudice. It's also possible that minorities, on average, have completed less college than whites (because of lots of factors). That means that while the Labor Dept figure appears to suggest you need an education to get or keep your job in today's economy, what it might really be saying is that you need to be white in order to avoid prejudice in the workplace in today's economy (and whites just happen to have gone to more school). I'm not saying this is the case. I'm just saying that we don't really know that the education level is the determining factor in employment figures. But I suspect it certainly has a role.

NB Interestingly, CNN notes that while black unemployment is at 13.3% today, it was over 17% in November of 1983.