WASHINGTON - Unemployment rates in the United States are expected to remain high in 2010, but a new study says black and Hispanic workers will suffer significantly more than their white counterparts.

"The gap between white and minority unemployment rates has already grown dramatically during this recession and it is expected to continue growing," said Kai Filion, author of the study produced by the Economic Policy Institute.

The study predicts the unemployment rate in the third quarter of 2010 will be 9.0 percent for white Americans, up from 8.1 percent at present and compared to 10 percent across the board.

But for black workers, the rate will be as high as 17.2 percent, and for Hispanics, up to 13.9 percent, the study said.

In five US states among the worst affected by the recession -- Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and South Carolina -- the unemployment rate for black workers is forecast to exceed 20 percent.

The study predicts that the unemployment rate for white workers will have grown by 5.0 percentage points from the beginning of the US recession in December 2007 to the third quarter of 2010.

For black workers, a total increase of 8.6 percent is forecast, and for Hispanics a rise of 7.9 percentage points.

Despite the economic downturn, a separate study by the Pew Research Center found that black Americans are more optimistic about the state of black progress than at anytime in last 25 years.

A year after President Barack Obama's election, 39 percent of black Americans said they were better off now than five years earlier, a 19 point increase since 2007.

The survey, which questioned 2,884 people -- 812 of them black -- at the end of 2009, also found 56 percent thought the standard of living gap between blacks and white had narrowed over the last decade.

Another 53 percent said they thought the future for black Americans "will be better," a nine-point increase from 2007.