Young workers of color who graduated from high school and college in 2010 are experiencing disproportionately high joblessness, a new Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper finds. African-American, Asian-American and Hispanic recent graduates have been particularly hard-hit by the recession.

Graduate Employment Gap: Students of Color Losing Ground, by EPI researcher Algernon Austin, examines unemployment data for 16-to-24-year-olds who graduated from high school or college in 2010, and who are not currently enrolled in school. It also looks at employment-to-population ratios, or employment rates, because jobless young people are often not counted in the unemployment rate.

The unemployment rate for 16-to-24-year-old African-Americans high school graduates increased 11 points since the beginning of the recession, to 31.3 percent. The rate for Hispanic high school graduates increased 15 points to 23.8 percent, and the rate for Asian-American high school graduates increased 15.3 percentage points to 21.6 percent.

The unemployment rate for White high school graduates, at 21.4 percent, is the lowest and increased 11 percent since the beginning of the recession. In 2007, Hispanic and Asian-American high school graduates had lower unemployment rates than White high school graduates; the recession erased these unemployment-rate advantages.

Employment rate data for high school graduates confirm these findings. College graduates have fared better than high school graduates since the start of the recession.

African-American college graduates have an unemployment rate of 15.4 percent, up from 8.4 percent at the beginning of the recession. Hispanic college graduates had an unemployment rate of 4.1 percent at the beginning of the recession and have one of 11.8 percent now.

The unemployment rate for White college graduates has grown from 4.0 percent to 7.9 percent since the recession began, and from 6.5 percent to 6.9 percent for Asian-American college graduates. Notably, unemployment rates have gone down for African-American, Hispanic and, particularly, Asian-American college graduates since the second half of 2009. The data, suggests more widespread joblessness among Asian-American college graduates.