WHEN the Federal Reserve considers whether the U.S. economy is ready for an interest rate hike today, policymakers will want to be confident the jobless rate, now at 5.1 percent, is as strong as it looks.

    There appear to be reasons for optimism as many poorer and less educated workers are finding jobs or receiving bigger raises.

    Improvements in the labor market for low-income Americans historically accelerate when the economy is closer to full output, which the U.S. central bank considers to be consistent with an unemployment rate between 5 percent and 5.2 percent.

    That suggests the Fed is running out of time to begin raising rates — it has kept its benchmark overnight lending rate at near zero since December 2008.

    The recent turmoil on global financial markets, however, has many investors betting the Fed’s policy-setting committee will leave rates unchanged at the end of its two-day meeting today, choosing to hike instead in December.

    Traders are now pricing in a 27 percent probability of a rate hike today.

    Low earners were the biggest losers when the jobless rate surged as high as 10 percent during the 2007-2009 Great Recession. In July, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said the downturn “was particularly punishing to African-Americans and to lower skilled workers more broadly.”

    Between 2008 and 2009, 1.2 million blacks lost their jobs across the nation. By 2011, the unemployment rate in the black community was 16.5 percent, more than 7 percentage points above the national average.

    But it had dropped among blacks to just over 9 percent as of last July, about 4 percentage points above the national average, which is roughly where it was before the recession, according to U.S. labor statistics.

    A similar recovery has played out among those without a high school diploma, about half of whom are black or Hispanic. That group’s unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent in August, right where it was before the recession started.

    “It’s a sign that we’re closer to full employment,” said James Sweeney, chief economist at Credit Suisse in New York.

    Some economists argue still-sluggish U.S. wage growth points to economic slack, which activists say is especially hard on black workers. Despite the recovery from the financial crisis, blacks remain poorer and about twice as likely as whites to be unemployed, a disparity that some economists point to in urging the Fed to keep rates low.

    (SD-Agencies)