Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver Velez
I was listening to Roland Martin Unfiltered yesterday morning, and one of the topics was “Black Women’s Jobless Rate Soars”
“The unemployment rate for Black women is at its highest in four years. We'll talk to the NAACP's Vice Chair about how the job losses are a direct result of Trump's racist policy decisions that have rolled back years of progress. “
His guest was Karen Boykin-Towns who talked about these staggering numbers.
More Than 300,000 Black Women Have Lost Their Jobs This Year. The NAACP Says It’s No Accident
Over 300,000 Black women have been pushed out of the workforce in recent months, and the numbers keep getting worse (not to mention it’s a figure that’s raising alarms among advocates and economists alike).
In April alone, more than 106,000 Black women lost their jobs. The unemployment rate for Black women jumped from 5.1 percent to 6.1 percent in a single month while the national rate stayed near 4.2 percent. By now it’s climbed to 7.5%, and the gap between Black women and everyone else is widening faster than it has since 2020.
Karen Boykin-Towns, Vice Chair of the NAACP National Board of Directors, says what’s happening isn’t just bad luck or market forces. “We’re witnessing a convergence of systemic inequities made worse by policy decisions that have rolled back hard won progress,” she says.
She points to companies quietly abandoning DEI commitments, massive federal workforce cuts, and small businesses struggling under tariffs and tight credit. Black women are concentrated in public service, nonprofits, and care work—sectors that have been hit hardest. “When you dismantle departments like Education and HUD, which have long employed large numbers of Black women, and weaken nonprofits that depend on government grants, you’re not just cutting jobs, you’re cutting stability, security, and pathways to advancement,” Boykin-Towns says. “What we’re seeing is not just personal choice but systemic disinvestment.”
She mentioned the political work that Rep Ayanna Pressley has been doing around this.
It isn’t as if this story hasn’t been reported. A quick google search turned up the following stories. What they need is more traction, more highlighting, and it shouldn’t just be a task for Black folks.
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About 300,000 Black women have left the workforce in the first half of 2025 as the Black unemployment rate topped 7%, limiting their access to healthcare, groceries, and maternal care. From Naomi Bethune:
trib.al/ZtXbgQx
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— The American Prospect (@prospect.org) December 4, 2025 at 1:45 PM
To Be Black, Female, and Unemployed
How unemployment in the Trump era shapes Black women’s lives when maternal care and food choices are in the mix
When the unemployment rate for African American women hit nearly 7 percent in August, alarms went off in Black communities across the country. One of the most widely reported developments was that in the first half of 2025, 300,000 Black women left the workforce. Coupled with a rapid rise in overall unemployment, some economists warned that this shocking development signaled the strong possibility of a recession or worse.
“The patterns that befall Black workers are frequently the patterns that are predictive of what’s coming for other groups in society at some point later on,” says Adia Harvey Wingfield, a professor of sociology at Washington University. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began reporting the unemployment rates for Black women and men in 1972. In 1983, Black women saw their highest rate of unemployment ever, coming in at a whopping 18.6 percent, a product of the recession of 1982. The recessionary pressures ebbed, but the Black-white unemployment gaps persisted: The rates for Black Americans have typically been double those of their white counterparts.
The crusade against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is also a major factor in job loss among Black women in both the public and private sectors. “That is an area where you will see more Black workers doing that work: We’re being pushed out and shut down as companies are retreating from these efforts and from that commitment,” says Wingfield. When the Trump administration made the decision to shutter all DEI programs, destroy any related jobs, and prosecute employers who use those frameworks in the name of restoring “merit-based” hiring, Black women did and will continue to suffer the fallout. The private sector has followed suit. National Public Radio reported that there were only 17,700 DEI jobs nationwide in January 2025, down from 20,000 positions in January 2023.
Here’s one of Pressley’s recent posts:
From her website:
With Black Women’s Unemployment Rising, Pressley Holds Urgent Discussion with Impacted Women, Economists, Civil Rights Leaders
As the unemployment rate for Black women continues to rise, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, and YW Boston convened Black women, economists, civil rights leaders, and community members for an urgent discussion about the unemployment crisis facing Black women and its impact in Massachusetts and beyond. The roundtable and press conference followed the Trump Administration’s release of the September jobs report, which revealed a 7.5% unemployment rate for Black women—an alarming spike from the 6.7% unemployment rate following the August jobs report and well above the 4.4% national rate.
In Congress, Rep. Pressley has repeatedly sounded the alarm on the rising number of Black women forced out of the workforce in the United States and called on the Federal Reserve to take action. This week, Rep. Pressley issued a statement after the Trump Administration finally released the September jobs report.
“Black women in Massachusetts and across the country are facing a shameful crisis of high unemployment that has everything to do with the racist and fiscally irresponsible economic policies of the Trump White House,” said Congresswoman Pressley. “This is not just a crisis for Black women—it’s an alarming indicator of the state of our economy that has dangerous consequences for Black women, Black families, and Black futures. Our policy response must always be informed by those directly impacted, which is why I was proud to convene this timely discussion. I am grateful to the women and leaders who joined us.”
Among those joining Congresswoman Pressley at the convening were Secretary Lauren Jones, Massachusetts Secretary of Labor & Workforce Development; Lori Nelson, Chief Resilience Officer, City of Boston; Aba Taylor, President & CEO, YW Boston; Alyssa Benalfew-Ramos, Chief of Policy, Black Economic Council of Massachusetts; economist and award-winning author Anna Gifty; Theresa Alphonse; Sonya Dhanpat; Helen Joseph, LMHC; and others.
From her YouTube channel:
More coverage:
The exit economy is here. Black Women are paying the highest price
Since February, according to my latest analysis, almost 600,000 Black women have been economically sidelined. The November 20, 2025, Jobs Report makes clear this isn’t a blip. It’s a structural crisis. The economy added only 119,000 payroll jobs in September. Revisions to August and July erased another 33,000 positions (the country actually lost 4,000 jobs in August), leaving just 187,000 jobs gained over three months—an average of 62,000 per month. That’s a 3% slowdown from the previous quarter’s already anemic growth.
Stagnation would be troubling enough. But because revisions are reported only in aggregate, we don’t know which groups bore the brunt of those cuts. Intersectional analysis fills that gap—and what it reveals about Black women’s employment should alarm us all.
Black women are being sidelined at scale
Since February, Black women have lost 297,000 jobs. Another 223,000 remain unemployed. And 75,000 have been pushed out of the labor force entirely. I estimate that these forced exits alone are draining an estimated $9.2 billion from U.S. GDP this year. These aren’t just missing paychecks; they represent lost productivity, lost tax revenue, and diminished national output.
Here’s Pressley back in Nov:
Pressley presses Powell to address rise in unemployment among Black women
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) wrote to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Monday urging him to address the recent rise in unemployment among Black women under the Trump administration.
August data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed unemployment among Black women at 2.4 percentage points higher than the national average.
“Black women unemployment has remained significantly high since March 2025. Mass federal workforce layoffs by the current Trump Administration have disproportionately impacted Black women, who comprise about 12 percent of the federal workforce compared to about 7 percent of the overall labor market,” Pressley wrote in the letter.
The national labor statistics are a broader reflection of a microcosm in the nation’s capital where the Black-white unemployment ratio is the highest in the nation at 3.9-to-1, experts say.
During the first quarter of 2025, mass firings ordered by President Trump caused the Black unemployment rate in DC to soar at 9.9 percent compared to 2.6 percent for white residents, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Fiscal Policy Institute.
[..]
Pressley’s calls for transparency from the Fed come amid corporations’ rollbacks of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring practices and policies first implemented in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 death.
Earlier this year, Powell and economists pledged to ensure maximum employment for all demographics.
“Furthermore, the attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] have compounded the negative effects on Black women,” Pressley wrote in her letter. “Economic barriers like hiring discrimination and wage disparities are more prevalent when employers are prohibited from valuing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).”
Was surprised to see this from Politico:
Black women’s unemployment ‘dire warning’ for the economy
The push to downsize the federal workforce is disproportionately impacting Black women, cutting off a critical pathway to middle-class stability just as their unemployment rate climbs.
Black women make up 12 percent of the federal workforce — nearly double their share of the overall labor force — and at least 266,000 Black women were affected by DOGE job cuts, according to reporting by The 19th. Combined with the private sector, over the last few months, more than 300,000 Black women have left the workforce. Now, as unemployment decreases for other communities, the unemployment rate for Black women has steadily increased: from 5.8 percent in June, to 6.3 percent in July, to 7.5 percent in August.
The national unemployment numbers tell two stories: How many people are not working, but also those who want to work but can’t. With Black women’s unemployment rate well above the national average of 4.3 percent, experts warn of the impact this could have on the larger economy.
“Black women, we are the canaries in the coal mine on the economy,” says Gabrielle Wyatt, CEO and founder of The Highland Project, an organization focused on sustaining Black women leaders in communities and institutions. “Our unemployment rate should not just be a concern for us, it should be an early signal of a deeper economic distress that will impact everyone if it’s not addressed.”
I’m hearing those famous words from Minister Malcolm X in my head again:
“The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.”
—Malcolm X, 1962
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Amid increasing outrage and awareness of police killings, #SayHerName emerged to amplify the stories of Black women, femmes, and girls. On Monday, December 8, the African American Policy Forum will commemorate the 11th anniversary of #SayHerName with a fundraiser and stage reading of the play inspired by the movement.
A moving performance piece, #SayHerName: The Lives That Should Have Been imagines a world where Black women, girls, and femmes killed by police are still alive. It’s based on interviews with participants of the “SayHerName Mothers’ Network.
The production has grown and met the changing dynamics and imagination of living life after loved ones have been unjustly stripped away. It debuted during Women’s History Month in 2019, gracing the stage at the Hammer Museum at UCLA.
The #SayHerName play isn’t the first time the movement has been commemorated in the arts. In 2021, recording artist Janelle Monae wrote a song, “Say Her Name,” in honor of Black women and girls killed by police.
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The Trump administration’s latest move on immigration further escalates the right’s power play toward a white nation-state. In particular, the so-called “third world” ban on migration is not about security. It is about control.
It is about preserving a white supremacist vision of America — one that sees Black, Brown, and Asian immigrants not as contributors, but as contaminants.
Using the pretense of the D.C. shooter being from Afghanistan, the Trump administration has begun taking actions against long-term residents and others protected by programs like the Temporary Protected Status (or TPS), including Haitians, Venezuelans, Somalis, and Afghans.
Donald Trump’s declaration to “permanently pause migration from all third-world countries” is not a new policy — it is a racialized revival of exclusionary immigration frameworks that date back to the 1924 Immigration Act, also known as the Johnson-Reed Act.
Afrikaner refugees from South Africa arrive, Monday, May 12, 2025, at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Va. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
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Crockett could become the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Texas. It would also mark the first time in the Senate's history that three Black women have served simultaneously. The Grio: Jasmine Crockett launches historic campaign for US Senate in Texas
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Jasmine Crockett, the high-profile congresswoman from Texas, has officially launched her campaign for the U.S. Senate, marking the beginning of a historic campaign that could see her become the first Black woman to hold the seat from the state. It would also mark the first time in the history of the Senate that three Black women have served simultaneously.
Crockett filed paperwork to become a candidate for the Democratic primary election on March 3.
The 44-year-old congresswoman has hinted since October that she would consider running for the Senate after Texas Republicans redrew the state’s congressional maps, impacting several districts represented by Black and Latino Democrats. Crockett’s bid for the Senate means she will have to resign from Congress, leaving her 30th district wide open for a Democratic primary.
“Congresswoman Crockett has been an unapologetic voice fighting against the Trump Administration’s attacks on working-class people and everyday people,” Jamarr Brown, former executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, told theGrio.
He continued, “Whether the attacks on DEI programs, the attacks on reproductive health care, the attacks on the economy, the elimination of federal jobs…She has been a leader in voicing the opposition in the halls of power.”
Crockett is a former civil rights attorney and served in the Texas State House of Representatives, where she became a vocal opponent of Texas Republicans’ voter restriction laws. Since entering Congress, she quickly emerged as a popular Democrat, resulting in her name being repeatedly mentioned by President Donald Trump.
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After years of living in a food desert and having to travel miles away for food, residents in North Flint, Michigan, can shop for fresh produce and groceries while supporting members of the predominantly Black community, thanks to the recently opened North Flint Food Market Cooperative.
The North Flint Food Market Cooperative (NFFM) is Flint’s first cooperative grocery. Unlike traditional grocery stores, which are run by corporations, NFFM is a co-op owned by approximately 900 community members who have invested in the store.
“For over a decade, we wandered in the wilderness hoping for what many communities take for granted: access to healthy food, job and career opportunities, and business ownership and control of one’s destiny,” Rev. Dr. Reginald Flynn, the co-owner and executive director of North Flint Food Market, told WNEM.
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Jaspert, who was in his late 30s, had recently been appointed governor by Queen Elizabeth II, on the recommendation of the Foreign Office in London. The BVI is an overseas territory of Britain, with only partial independence, and the governor effectively acts as a backstop to the locally elected legislature. For Jaspert, a career civil servant, it would be his first hands-on experience of governing – and his first time in the British Virgin Islands. Any trepidation was outweighed by the prospect of moving to the Caribbean. “If you’re sitting in an office in London and someone says, ‘Go to Tortola,’ you look it up on a screen and think, ‘OK, I can do that,’” Jaspert told me.
While Jaspert, his wife and two sons were settling into their new life, a tropical storm gathered over the Atlantic. At first, forecasters weren’t unduly alarmed, but in the first days of September, the storm transformed into something much worse. In the afternoon of 6 September, Hurricane Irma made landfall in Tortola, which is home to the majority of the BVI’s 30,000-strong population. Irma was one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic basin. It scalped buildings, blew out windows and removed entire floors from homes. Shipping containers smashed into the islanders’ fishing boats and the out-of-towners’ yachts.
aspert rushed his family into the bathroom of the governor’s residence, an imposing white-stucco mansion lined by porticos which, only finished in 2003, was newer and sturdier than many islanders’ homes. (The original Government House structure, dating back to the late 19th century, was destroyed in a 1924 hurricane.) If the roof fell in, Jaspert reasoned that he could at least upend the bath tub to create an air pocket until help arrived. Ordinary islanders, many of whom live in squat bungalows or ageing low-rise apartment blocks, had few such options.
The next day, as the gales died down and flood water continued to rise, islanders emerged to a territory in ruins: four in every five buildings in Tortola was either damaged or destroyed. The damage ran into the billions of dollars, larger than the territory’s entire GDP. Though the death toll was mercifully low – officially, only four people – around half the population were left homeless.
Islanders, a tight-knit community, began the work of rebuilding their homes, but the official reconstruction effort ultimately fell to two men: Jaspert, only a fortnight into his governorship, and Dr Daniel Orlando Smith, the elected premier of the territory, a surgeon turned politician who had led the islands since 2011. Jaspert and Smith had limited information, no working electricity and barely any internet connectivity. Life-and-death decisions about water distribution, food provision and emergency shelter for homeless people had to be taken on the fly in the basement of the territory’s only hospital.
The problems that had festered on the BVI long before either Jaspert or Smith took up their posts – corruption, nepotism, meagre accountability – were thrown into sharp relief now that islanders depended upon government for their basic necessities. The constitution, which attempts to neatly parcel power between locally elected politicians and a British governor, strained at the seams. “If you’re a governor who pushes and tries to clean things up or to take action, you very quickly get a wall of stuff coming back at you,” Jaspert told me.
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