REUTERS/Bryan Woolston Acquire Licensing RightsNEW YORK, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Black Americans were the only U.S. racial or ethnic group to see a drop in their jobless rate in August, helping drive the gap between the rates for Black people and white people back to near a record low. The unemployment rate for Black Americans historically has risen before an approaching recession and typically has turned higher before that of other groups. August's half-percentage point drop to 5.3% came as the rates for whites, Hispanics and Asian Americans all rose. The overall U.S. jobless rate rose to 3.8% from 3.5%, but that was the result of growth in the workforce. The unemployment rate gap between Black and white Americans fell back to 1.9 percentage points, just 0.3 percentage points shy of the record 1.6-point gap in April.

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Persons: Bryan Woolston, Amina Niasse, Peter Graff Organizations: Kentucky Labor, REUTERS, Bryan Woolston Acquire, Black, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Blacks, Thomson Locations: Frankfort , Kentucky, U.S