By Jennifer Mathews
- Black unemployment hit 7.5% in August, a red flag for workers and policymakers alike
- Tariffs and DEI rollbacks risk pushing Black women out of a cooling labor market and slowing growth for everyone
When the U.S. job market catches a cold, Black workers get pneumonia. In August, the Black unemployment rate rose to 7.5%, while the national rate hovered at 4.3%. That gap is not a blip. It is a signal. The question is whether leaders will treat it like a warning or shrug it off. If 7.5% were the headline number, America would call it a crisis. We should act like it is.
Why This Matters: Black workers are the backbone of essential sectors and the heartbeat of culture. Yet our labor sits on a fault line. Black people are 12.9% of the labor force but earn only 9.6% of total U.S. wages. That mismatch compounds every shock. It means fewer buffers when hours are cut or jobs disappear. It means Black women, who already carry disproportionate caregiving and debt burdens, fall first and hardest when hiring cools. If Black unemployment continues to rise, momentum stalls for everyone.
At the same time, corporations are retreating from inclusion and closing doors that were only cracked open. Target’s DEI pullback is a case study in how “neutrality” can harm Black-owned brands and workers who rely on those pipelines. Black Americans are projected to wield about $2 trillion in buying power by 2026, up from roughly $1.7 trillion in 2024. That consumer engine helps drive U.S. growth. The fix is not a mystery. Protect and expand DEI pipelines, enforce fair hiring, fund apprenticeships tied to real wages, and target small-business capital to Black founders. Treat a 7.5% Black jobless rate like a national emergency, because it is one.
Situational Awareness: Policy choices amplify the pain. New tariffs are raising costs across supply chains. Companies, from sneakers to cars, say they are passing those costs to consumers. Higher prices strain hiring and squeeze household budgets, which can feed back into layoffs in retail and services, where there is a large concentration of Black workers.
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