7.5% of African Americans were unemployed in 2017, compared with 6.7% in 1968 — still roughly twice the white unemployment rate

The rate of homeownership, one of the most important ways for working- and middle-class families to build wealth, has remained virtually unchanged for African Americans in the past 50 years. Black homeownership remains just over 40%, trailing 30 points behind the rate for whites, who have seen modest gains during that time. The share of incarcerated African Americans has nearly tripled between 1968 and 2016. African Americans are 6.4 times as likely than whites to be jailed or imprisoned, compared with 5.4 times as likely in 1968. The wealth gap between white and black Americans has more than tripled in the past 50 years, according to Federal Reserve data. The typical black family had zero wealth in 1968. Today the median net worth of white families — $171,000 — is 10 times that of black families. The hourly wage of a typical black worker grew by just 0.6% a year since 1968. African Americans make 82.5 cents of every dollar earned by the typical white worker. And the typical black household earns 61.6% of the annual income of white households, with black college graduates continuing to make less than white college graduates. Despite the poverty rate dropping from more than a third of black households in 1968 to about a fifth of black households, African Americans are 2½ times as likely to be in poverty than whites.