Although the latest U.S. labor report shows Black women’s unemployment rate fell from 7.07% to 5.73% on paper, many highly educated Black women have been pushed out and are still struggling to find jobs. A groundbreaking new report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), titled Barriers, Not Bootstraps, has released data that Black women have known for generations.
You can earn a degree, gain experience, and even work in a high-growth industry, yet still struggle to get hired and promoted. “Last one hired and first one fired”, a popular phrase repeated in the Black community, is now backed by data.
The report revealed that Black women are not struggling in today’s labor market because they lack qualifications or are not working hard, but because there are still systematic barriers that stand between their economic ambition and opportunity.
“Since January 2025, according to Katica Roy, more than 600,000 Black women have been pushed out of the labor market, causing a ripple effect in the economy. IWPR estimates that more than 250,000 Black women lost jobs between January and August 2025 alone. Aggressive anti-DEI policies, federal government job cuts, AI hiring biases and tariffs have had a compounded impact on Black women entering and staying in the labor market.
Over the past year, civil rights advocates, legislators, business leaders, and economists have raised the alarm on the devastating impact of Black women being pushed out of the US economy.
The Trump Administration has, however, forged ahead with pushing anti-DEI policies, dismantling the Department of Education and removing civil rights protections that help mitigate racial inequality in America. Dr. Jennifer Turner, one of the authors of the report, noted that “Black women have been having a much worse time in the labor market over the past year — not surprising, given everything that’s been going on in the news.”
Challenges for Young Black women entering the workforce
For young Black women entering the workforce after college, the job market can be daunting. “We found that Black women have spent twice as long unemployed as White women — and that young Black women were more than twice as likely to be unemployed in the first place than White women,” said Turner.
The report revealed that Black women had even surpassed the unemployment rate for young Black men, which is normally higher.
The IWPR report revealed that the labor market challenges facing young Black women cannot be explained away by low educational attainment, a lack of personal effort, or working in shrinking industries. “The return on investment in higher education is lower [for Black women] than for [their] white counterparts, both in finding a job and in earnings.”
Surprisingly, even in today’s slow job market in lucrative fields like healthcare, business, and professional sectors, Black women are still struggling to get hired. Turner argued that policymakers and Congress need to address the cause of the problem through effective public policies and not put the blame on Black women.
AI and the “Anti-DEI Economy”
Common job advice such as “working twice as hard to get half as far” given in the Black community no longer seems applicable especially in the age of AI.
Combined with shrinking job openings in a “low-hire” market, Black women face what Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman calls a “double tax”—where they are being discriminated against in the job market for their gender and race.
Dr. Mrinmoyee Chatterjee, a Senior Social Science Research and Data Analyst at IWPR, pointed out that “we’re in a ‘low-hire market’ — fewer job openings, one of the lowest since the immediate post-pandemic period. And when opportunities shrink, they shrink first for marginalized workers. It’s harder to get the job you want even with the degree.”
In high-growth sectors like healthcare, even entry-level professional diplomas can cost nearly $10,000—a daunting burden when Black women historically earn roughly 65 cents on the dollar compared to non-Hispanic white men.
Reverse discrimination and demographic shift
By 2045, the U.S. is projected to become a majority-minority country for the first time, with White America becoming the numerical minority. When asked about the political pushback against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and claims of White men experiencing “reverse discrimination” in the workplace Turner and Chatterjee pointed directly back to empirical evidence.
“The facts simply don’t corroborate that story,” Dr. Chatterjee emphasized, pointing out that white men still hold most managerial and executive positions across Fortune 500 corporations.
Dr. Turner added, “Rolling back anti-DEI protections or eliminating EEOC reporting data that keeps employers accountable ultimately hurts Black women most, but it also hurts all workers. It bolsters an economy built for the few, not the many.”
When asked what the private sector can do to mitigate job discrimination in the workforce, Dr. Chatterjee pointed out that “some of that comes down to discrimination within the hiring process itself.” She also pointed out that corporations should offer more paid leave and flexible work opportunities to help Black women stay in professional jobs.
Nevertheless, the high unemployment and job search crisis inflicting Black women has had a detrimental impact on Black women’s mental health. Helen Joseph, a licensed mental health counselor, says that “when Black women are pushed out of the workforce, the impact on our mental health — and the damage to the well-being of our families and communities — is profound.”
Entrepreneurship: Choice or Economic Survival?
Faced with hiring discrimination and corporate cutbacks, millions of Black women are turning to entrepreneurship to meet their economic needs. While business ownership gives them greater control, what are the costs? How do you build a business when you are economically distressed? The IWPR researchers caution against viewing self-employment as a total substitute for structural labor reform.
“Two things can be true,” Dr. Turner noted. ” We should celebrate Black women’s resilience and creativity, but we also need to acknowledge that because health insurance, for example, is tied to employment in the U.S., relegating Black women and other marginalized women to entrepreneurship can put them in a more precarious position.”
Dr Turner stressed that pushing Black women out of the labor market is a real problem, especially cutting them out of the federal workforce, which has been a traditional pathway to the middle class.
Dr. Chatterjee, drawing on her international research experience in labor economics, drew parallels to poor countries reliant on large informal sectors. “When opportunities shrink in the formal economy, people do what they must to survive. But entrepreneurship shouldn’t be the only door open to women. We must make the formal economy accessible and equitable, ” Chatterjee stressed. Forcing Black women into entrepreneurship is a “patchwork solution” to addressing the crisis, Chatterjee added.
The Wall Street Journal reported that “Black women own 2.9 million businesses, about 18% of all women-owned companies in the U.S.” However, due to lack of financing, venture capitalists funding and professional networks, it’s much more difficult to scale.
The 2026 Impact of Women-Owned Businesses Report by Wells Fargo Bank stated that “Black/African American women-owned businesses had the lowest average revenue ($650,000), reflecting persistent challenges in scaling despite strong firm and employment growth.”
Ripple Effects of Black women pushed out the economy
Historically, economic trends that impact Black women first eventually ripple across the entire nation. Economists often refer to Black women as the “canary in the coal mine” for the U.S. labor market.
“If you make it harder for a large group of willing, highly educated people to participate in the labor force, that is simply bad economic policy,” Dr. Chatterjee stated. “You lose skilled workers who contribute to GDP, pay into Social Security, and power consumer spending.
Dr. Chatterjee pointed out that while the national gender wage gap for all women expanded over two consecutive years, the wage gap for Black women specifically began widening three years ago, acting as an early warning signal for broader systemic decline.
Where Do We Go from Here?
As Congress continues to stall on labor reforms and student debt relief, IWPR is focusing on state-level interventions while holding employers accountable. Tools like IWPR’s State Policy Action Lab track real-time legislation across all 50 states, equipping local leaders, civil rights organizations, and advocates with evidence-based policy solutions to advance pay transparency, paid leave, and equitable hiring practices.
Ultimately, addressing this economic injustice requires more than conversation. It demands civic engagement, private sector accountability, and elected leaders who uphold their constitutional responsibilities and ensure that economic opportunity is accessible to all Americans.
Black women—who continue to face some of the greatest barriers in the labor market—must remain at the center of economic and workforce policy if the U.S. hopes to build a stronger economy. As the nation becomes increasingly diverse, ensuring that Black women’s voices are represented in government, business and policymaking will be critical to shaping solutions that benefit all workers.
As policymakers continue to debate, ignore, and stall for economic justice, Black women will do what they have always done: remain resilient, be resourceful, and find ways to support their families. The question is whether policymakers and employers will remove barriers to ensure that the American economy works for everyone, even as it currently grows at a sluggish 1.5% annual rate.
