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Brussels, BelgiumCarine Willaert prepares fries in the Maison Antoine frites stand in Brussels December 4, 2014. There are some 5,000 of these in Belgium, making them 10 times more common, per capita, than McDonald's restaurants in the United States. The Belgian minimum wage is $1,630, or around $10, compared to $7.25 in the U.S. Picture taken on December 4, 2014. REUTERS/Yves Herman

Latino unemployment dropped 6.6 percent, according to a government announcement on Friday. That’s a 6.5 percent improvement over the 2009 rate of 13.1, at the height of the recession. Latinos unemployment still lags behind that of the general population which has also dripped. national unemployment was 5.5 percent, the lowest in seven years. Those figures don’t account for individuals who have given up on finding work, or those who are involuntarily under-employed.

While Americans are getting back to work, they’re not making much money. According to statistics reported by Forbes, wages as barely kept up with inflation, growing at about 2 percent. That’s about a 3-cent increase in the average hourly wage, $24.78. The liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute calculates that Latino and African American wages also stagnated, hovering around 70-75 percent of median Caucasian wages in 2014.

Food services, which are notoriously low-paying, was the largest job growth area in February, according to Forbes. Mining, traditionally a high-paying category, lost jobs. Union activists continue to call for an increase to the minimum. Protests targeting food services employers such as McDonalds in September demanded a $15 “living wage.”

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