Black Women's Unemployment Has Skyrocketed. Here's What Happened. | Nonprofit Quarterly | Civic News. Empowering Nonprofits. Advancing Justice.

"As a single mother, her thoughts turned to her elementary school-age children. They turned to the people she was supporting in Liberia as they worked to revamp the country's only public medical school. And they turned to the other Black women like her - on her team alone there were senior leaders who were Black women - for whom jobs like this one in the federal government had been a lifeline, offering high pay, benefits and a chance to do meaningful work."

""We had worked so hard to even get places at the table, and then the chairs were just removed," Nataro said. The end of USAID via an executive order on Inauguration Day was the first in a series of deep cuts the new administration made to the federal workforce in the year since Donald Trump returned to office. Those cuts ran deeper for the Black women like Nataro who disproportionately worked in jobs that were eliminated."

"Black women started 2025 with an unemployment rate of 5.4 percent. They ended it at 7.3 percent - the highest rate in four years. Black women's unemployment is now equivalent to White women's rate during the bleakest moments of the Great Recession. "The labor market that Black women live in is what White women would think of as the worst labor market they've ever been in," said Kathryn Anne Edwards, a labor economist."

A federal executive action ended USAID positions and triggered broader federal workforce cuts that disproportionately affected Black women. A nine-year USAID employee lost access and employment, jeopardizing her children and projects in Liberia. Many of the affected positions were held by Black women in senior roles who relied on federal jobs for pay, benefits, and meaningful work. Black women's unemployment rose from 5.4 percent at the start of 2025 to 7.3 percent by year-end, the highest in four years and comparable to White women's peak unemployment during the Great Recession. Economists describe the resulting labor market for Black women as exceptionally severe.

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