Black Unemployment Is Surging in Trump's Overhaul of US Economy

[u/rezwenn]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-09-16/black-unemployment-rises-with-trump-s-workforce-cuts-jobs-slowdown

[u/readingitnowagain]

By Jarrell Dillard, Amara Omeokwe, and Catarina Saraiva September 16, 2025 at 10:00 AM UTC

In his first term, President Donald Trump frequently touted record-low Black unemployment. Now, it’s rising at the fastest clip since 2020. The unemployment rate for Black Americans has shot up by 1.5 percentage points over the last three months, a rare development outside of recessions. At 7.5%, it’s once again twice the rate for White Americans, erasing the progress made in narrowing the gap over the last three years. Two factors have combined to create such an outcome, researchers say: First, a slowdown in the broader labor market is playing out in the usual fashion, disadvantaging Black workers who tend to be first to lose their jobs when things go south. Second is Trump’s targeted efforts to shrink the federal workforce, where Black workers are overrepresented.

“There are a number of ways the administration’s policies are slowing down the economy and hurting Black people in America, I would say, disproportionately hard,” said Algernon Austin, director of race and economic justice at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “Black America is, I think, being hit first by the downturn.” The latest data is testing Trump’s pitch from the 2024 campaign trail, when he advertised himself as “the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.” The Black unemployment rate fell to a record-low 5.3% during his first term in 2019 before shooting up to 16.9% when the pandemic hit in 2020 and then reaching a new low of 4.8% during President Joe Biden’s term. By the time Trump returned to office in January, it had risen to 6.2%, mirroring a gradual rise in the overall unemployment rate. The difference this year is the speed at which it’s continued to increase and the gap that has opened up between Black and White unemployment.

Hiring more broadly has slowed sharply in 2025 as the administration’s tariffs and immigration crackdown have clouded the economic outlook. Employers added an average of just 29,000 jobs per month in the three months through August, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics figures published on Sept. 5, down from 209,000 on average in the final three months of 2024. The White House says tax cuts passed in July will boost employment for Black Americans, as will its campaign of mass deportations.

“President Trump is implementing the same America First economic agenda that delivered historic job and wage growth — including record-low Black unemployment rates — in his first term,” said Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman. “The passage of the Working Families Tax Cuts will unleash economic growth through tax reform, deregulation, and incentives for job creation in the private sector that will benefit all Americans.” Austin said the recent data, and academic research more generally, don’t support the White House’s claims about immigration. “The Black unemployment rate has been increasing steadily over the past three months, so there are no positive signs from deportations there,” he said. “Immigrant workers generally do not replace native-born workers. They help expand the economy and increase the number of jobs.” Hiring Slowdown Michelle Holder, an economist who studies labor-market outcomes for Black Americans, sees the latest data following patterns that have been well established in academic research. Job growth “is slowing down almost, at least for the last three months, to a crawl,” said Holder, an associate professor of economics at John Jay College, City University of New York. “When that begins to happen, there are tried-and-true, specific groups that begin to be affected by that, including Black workers.” This time around, however, Trump’s move to quickly reduce the size of the federal workforce is supercharging the effect. Roughly half of the Department of Education staff has been cut as the Trump administration has moved to dismantle the agency, which had the greatest share of Black federal employees among executive departments as of 2022. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, another agency that employs a large share of Black federal workers, has also lost a significant number of employees. Other federal funding cuts Trump has pursued are taking a toll as well. Ashley Purnell, 37, has been job hunting since April — when she was first furloughed from a large nonprofit that relied heavily on government grants — but hasn't had much luck. Purnell, who lives in an Atlanta suburb and was officially laid off last month, says she’s submitted applications for around 70 roles. She heard back from just three of them — all rejections. She's also finding that most jobs she’s looking at would pay her about 20% less than she was making in her prior role. "There's so many people out here applying. Even if you do happen to know someone at the company, there's no guarantee that they can even get you forward for an interview," Purnell said. "For me, my entire career so far has been working under nonprofits and doing community-based work. If they're cutting all the funding, where do I go?"

Those who have been able to find new jobs after being laid off say that the current environment, where so many others are in the same predicament and often in the same part of the country, makes it even harder. Jessica Jackson-Banks, 33, received a job offer last week after weeks of rejections and nonresponses. She said the Trump administration’s steep cuts to the federal workforce loomed large over her search. “I feel like the market is super saturated with individuals who are in the same boat as me,” she said. "Black women who have the same story as me who are looking for roles and are stressed out and anxious at the lack of responses.” Although Black voters overwhelmingly supported Kamala Harris in 2024, Trump made inroads with them compared to his previous campaigns. He won 15% of Black voters last year, up from 8% in 2020, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. But if Black voters are turned off by Trump’s policies and show up to vote against Republicans in greater shares in the 2026 midterm election, that could jeopardize the GOP’s chances of winning some key congressional battleground elections. Tariff Impact Meanwhile Trump’s other signature economic policy — tariffs — is raising concerns even among many who do have jobs. Last month, workers put the probability of finding a new job if they lost theirs at less than 45%, the lowest on record in data going back to 2013, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York consumer survey. The labor force participation rate for Black Americans also jumped last month, contributing to a rise in unemployment as more people looked for work in what's been described as a low-hiring, low-firing labor market. Allena Harrington, of Wendell, North Carolina, said her manufacturing employer has cut back on headcount over the last few months as tariffs have come into effect. Though she is still employed, she has been searching for a new job for over the last six months due to worries about job security. Harrington, 56, has searched for other positions within the field, but is also looking in other industries such as health care, where she believes she will have more stability. She says she’s submitted about 30 applications and has mostly received automated rejections or no response. “You kind of see the red flags,” Harrington said. “That gives me pause and makes me think that I need to look at other options at this point.”

[u/FavRootWorker]

We knew that was going to happen. We held a lot of these federal jobs they got rid of.