In this week's newsletter: 

• We’ll get May jobs numbers next week. The unemployment rate held steady in April, but is there more behind that number?

• Companies made a lot of promises after George Floyd’s murder. Which ones did they keep?

• President Donald Trump wants to limit Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students. What are the economic ripple effects?

• Is it bottom’s up for the craft beer industry?

Reader Luke Burnham from Concord, Massachusetts, asked Marketplace:

I hear a lot of people talking about the unemployment rate - above 4% these days. But I also hear people saying that the number is artificially low because of people who have given up looking for work. I'm curious to know how the unemployment figure is determined.

The April unemployment rate stood at 4.2%, which is a historically low figure, but not everyone without a job ends up counted in this number. 

The headline unemployment rate is calculated by dividing the number of unemployed by the number of people in the labor force, and then multiplying that figure by 100 to come up with the percentage we see in each monthly jobs report. The Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts a monthly survey of about 60,000 households to determine how many people are unemployed. 

To be considered unemployed, you must have actively tried to find a job within the last four weeks and be available for work. The labor force consists of all employed and unemployed people who are 16 or older, according to the BLS. 

“The official unemployment rate is one that's based on an internationally agreed upon definition that a lot of thought went into,” said Katharine Abraham, an economics professor at the University of Maryland. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics isn’t miscalculating the unemployment rate or trying to mislead the public about the number of people who are actually unemployed. The agency is rigorous in its calculations and transparent about how it makes those calculations, economists told Marketplace.  

After the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed, many corporations pledged to do more to support Black communities, including a flood of pledges and new investments in HBCUs — Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

“We were able to see a lot of folks making commitments to racial justice and also being educated about the underfunding of HBCUs,” said Denise Smith, a senior fellow at the Century foundation. “And at that time, we saw this really big surge in donations to HBCUs.”

But it’s tough to get a firm number for just how much was promised to HBCUs in total, according to Marybeth Gasman, a professor at Rutgers, where she also directs the Center for Minority Serving Institutions.

The grants and commitments were often announced on press releases, bundled together with other investments, and attempts to track the numbers over time have wound down. But it’s undeniable the influx of resources had an impact.

Pour one out for the craft brewing industry. 

What was once a booming market, adding breweries by the hundreds every year, has now stagnated.

Last year, for the first time in two decades, more breweries closed than opened in the U.S and craft beer production fell by nearly 4%, according to the Brewers Association, an industry trade group. That’s pushing surviving breweries to rethink their business models as they navigate a changing market.

A decade ago, the craft beer boom was solidly in the cultural zeitgeist. When Avery Schwenk of Brattleboro, Vermont, quit his job as a paramedic to start a brewery with his friend, he said his sister sent him a card that read, “Congratulations on quitting your job. Now go open that boutique microbrewery you have always wanted to.” 

It wasn’t a card she made, she’d found it at a store. "This just was a thing that people were doing,” he laughed.

We play a lot of DOOM on Marketplace — just check out our playlist of interstitial music — and host Kai Ryssdal is a craft brew fan. 

Tony Wagner wrote this newsletter. Janet Nguyen reported our top story on the unemployment rate, Kimberly Adams reported our story on HBCUs and Henry Epp reported our story on craft beer.