April 7 (Reuters) - The Black unemployment rate hit a record low in March, a milestone for a U.S. labor market that most policymakers and economists expect to begin cooling in the face of higher interest rates, jeopardizing those historic gains. The 0.7 percentage point decline in the African American unemployment rate was the largest since November 2021 and was led by Black women, for whom joblessness dropped to a record low 4.2%. The rate for Black men ticked up to 5.2% from February's record-low-matching 5.1%. Net flows into the labor market and the labor force participation rate are both improving, developments that research shows come along late in the employment cycle. In every U.S. recession since the 1970s the Black unemployment rate has risen by at least 2 percentage points more than for whites, and often by far more than that.

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