The good news: Officially the nation’s unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent in January, down from 10 percent in December. The bad news: That figure ignores
“„Unemployment rates for most major worker groups — adult men (10.0 percent), teenagers (26.4 percent), blacks (16.5 percent), and Hispanics (12.6 percent) — showed little change. The jobless rate for adult women fell to 7.9 percent, and the rate for whites declined to 8.7 percent.