Joblessness for Black workers is rising again, two years after reaching a record low. It’s a troubling indicator: Joblessness often spikes higher for historically marginalized groups during economic downturns, and takes longer to fall.
This time, the Trump administration’s assault on diversity programs and cuts to the federal work force could make it even more difficult for Black workers to recover when conditions improve.
The African American unemployment rate has surged over the past four months, from 6 to 7.5 percent, while the rate for white people ticked down slightly to 3.7 percent. On top of a slowing economy, the White House’s actions have disproportionately harmed Black workers, economists said.
“I think the speed at which things have changed, in such a dramatic fashion, is out of the ordinary,” said Valerie Wilson, who directs the program on race, ethnicity and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “There’s been such a rapid shift in policy, rather than something cyclical or structural about the economy.”
At least since the 1970s, when the federal government started tracking unemployment by race, the rate for Black people has run about twice the rate for white people. Because of inferior educational opportunities, the legacy of mass incarceration and discrimination over generations, Black people confront greater challenges in the job market.
A strong economy during President Trump’s first term created more jobs for Black workers, but many of them were lost when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in-person employment particularly hard. Generous public subsidies, though, cushioned the blow, and hiring rebounded quickly.
In 2023, conditions for Black workers looked as healthy as ever. Unemployment reached a low of 4.8 percent. Wages rose at their fastest pace since data collection began in the 1990s, and median Black household wealth reached the highest level on record.
Conditions started to deteriorate in 2024 after pandemic-era subsidies expired. Hiring slowed, and high prices weighed heavily on low-income earners. Black households were the only racial group last year in which median income fell and the poverty rate rose, according to the Census Bureau.
“I was hoping that the commitment to investing in America, so that a broader set of Americans were actually receiving benefits in terms of low unemployment and higher wages, would continue,” said Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank focused on issues affecting Black Americans. He said he was particularly disappointed in large businesses that said they would support Black workers in response to protests for racial justice in 2020, only to pull back.
Job losses are concentrated among Black women working in professional services such as human resources, according to Ms. Wilson’s analysis of federal data. A hiring freeze and mass layoffs in the federal work force, which have continued during the government shutdown and now exceed 200,000, have also fallen disproportionately on Black workers.
The hiring freeze is an impediment to young workers trying to get their foot in the door, too.
“The federal government is one of those places people are able to get an entry-level job,” said Gbenga Ajilore, the chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which researches the social safety net. “That’s a whole industry that’s closed to new hires.”
State and local governments have picked up some of the slack from federal agencies. But competition for those jobs has gotten tougher with more laid-off public-sector workers looking for positions.
Sherri Marshall, 26, who graduated from the University of California, Davis, a few years ago with a degree in psychology, has worked in Los Angeles for a rental car company and a homeless shelter. But both let her go, and she is still looking for a position that would put her education to use.
“It’s always like high-labor, low-paying jobs, nothing sustainable,” said Ms. Marshall, who works at a farmers’ market on the weekends and is building up a freelance social media marketing portfolio between filling out applications. “It’s harder for me to get more technical and higher-skilled jobs, despite being qualified.”
Ms. Marshall recited her qualifications in a 30-second pitch during a job fair with city agencies last week at the Los Angeles Black Worker Center, where she also volunteers. The nonprofit has pushed local governments to hire more Black workers because unionized public-sector jobs have historically provided an on-ramp to stable employment.
The federal backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion practices may be making it more difficult for Black workers to get hired in the private sector, too. Some of the strongest evidence for the efficacy of these practices, such as making sure to interview nonwhite candidates or reaching out to Black and Hispanic students, come from federal contractors. In one of its first actions, the Trump administration ordered that group not to pursue racial equity anymore.
Janel Belovette Jenkins, co-executive director of the Los Angeles Black Worker Center, tries to build relationships with employers who say they are swamped with applicants.
“A lot of people get their jobs through networking,” Mx. Jenkins said. “Part of our role is to create the programs that will create the network that connects highly skilled, qualified workers to employers who might not have initially seen them.”
Lower interest rates could offer some relief. Representative Ayanna Pressley, Democrat of Massachusetts, wrote to Jerome H. Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, in early September demanding that the central bank take stronger action to support full employment for Black workers. Fed officials lowered rates later in the month for the first time this year and suggested that more cuts were likely.
But Trump administration actions beyond work-force cuts and anti-D.E.I. policies could create additional hurdles for Black workers. The Department of Labor’s proposed rollback of minimum-wage and overtime protections for domestic workers, for example, would hurt their incomes. Home care aides for the elderly are overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic women.
And despite Mr. Trump’s claim on the campaign trail that immigrants take jobs from Black people, rising joblessness among Black workers suggests that mass deportations of migrants haven’t arrested the trend.
Brittany Alston, director of the Philly Black Worker Project, said expelling immigrants harmed the local economy in ways that hurt Black workers, too.
“We know that an injury to one deeply is an injury to all,” Ms. Alston said.
Lydia DePillis reports on the American economy for The Times. She has been a journalist since 2009, and can be reached at [email protected].
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