When the government shutdown came to an end last month, the much-delayed jobs report for September was finally released, revealing that the unemployment rate had inched up to 4.4%—the highest it had been in four years. Amid a tough job market and economic uncertainty, it’s little surprise that unemployment is on the rise again. In the latest jobs dispatch that was published today, unemployment had ticked up to 4.6% for the month of November.
But it’s a specific segment of the workforce that is most acutely feeling the effects of this spike in unemployment: For Black workers, the rate has stretched to 8.3%, up from 6%, in just the last six months. The rate among white workers, by comparison, has remained relatively steady, hovering just over 3%.
Why Black unemployment is rising
There are many reasons for this particular increase in unemployment. But experts say the dizzying pace of the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion has notably contributed to the rising unemployment rate among Black workers—and, more specifically, Black women, though the new jobs report for November indicates that unemployment among Black men has also increased.
The DEI pullback orchestrated by the Trump administration is not solely to blame for this dip in employment, though it plays a significant role. Since assuming office, Trump has taken aim at DEI programs across the public and private sectors. Starting in January, Trump issued a flurry of executive orders that shut down DEI offices across the federal government. He also reversed a key executive action that had promoted racial equity by curtailing discriminatory employment practices among contractors that work with the federal government. In addition, Trump has sought to dissolve DEI efforts across corporate America by directing federal agencies to investigate private companies—a move that has led many employers to reevaluate their DEI policies or eliminate certain programs altogether.
The job losses catalyzed by Trump’s directive to cut DEI roles across the federal government have affected Black workers, who also tend to hold diversity jobs in higher numbers. Even beyond that, the federal job losses—which are on track to reach 300,000 by the end of the year—have hit Black workers especially hard, because they are overrepresented in that part of the workforce. Data from September 2024 indicates that almost half of federal workers are women and about 41% are people of color.
An analysis by the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) earlier this year found that women and people of color were overrepresented at many of the federal agencies that saw significant reductions in their workforce. The Trump administration’s cuts have also targeted probationary workers—those in their first year of service or people who have recently been promoted—who are more likely to be women.
“It really boils down to sort of a perfect storm of factors,” says Valerie Wilson, the director of the program on race, ethnicity, and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute. “We have the federal layoffs and job losses. We have the retraction of DEI policies . . . and organizations, including the federal government, that have essentially eliminated DEI departments or roles that were likely held by a large number of Black women.” Wilson also notes that job losses across industries have disproportionately impacted women—from manufacturing to professional and business services.
How the DEI backlash has impacted Black workers
While it’s difficult to quantify the full scope of how anti-DEI measures have impacted Black employment, Wilson says there’s no doubt that there’s a correlation—and that the fallout goes beyond the elimination of DEI jobs held by Black workers. The Trump administration’s approach to DEI has also reshaped the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which has made “unlawful DEI-related discrimination” a focus of its enforcement under new chair Andrea Lucas.
Wilson argues the administration’s actions have a chilling effect, both on corporate DEI efforts and when it comes to how workers can seek recourse if they do face discrimination in the workplace. The fear that they might be targeted or face litigation has already driven employers to make significant changes to their DEI programs in recent years, dating back to the Supreme Court decision that struck down affirmative action in 2023. Tech companies like Meta and Google have dropped representation goals that were intended to diversify their ranks—once a common practice in the industry—while major employers like Walmart and McDonald’s have stopped prioritizing diverse suppliers and pulled out of the Human Rights Commission’s Corporate Equality Index, an influential benchmarking survey that measures workplace inclusion for LGBTQ+ workers.
Lauren Khouri, the senior director of workplace equality at the NWLC, points out that there are plenty of other programs that have been harmed by federal cuts and, in turn, impact workers of color—even if they are not explicitly denoted as DEI initiatives.
“It’s not just the cuts that we’ve seen in the federal workforce,” she says. “If you look at the repercussions of cuts in grant programs across the federal government, we’ve seen an attack on domestic violence and sexual assault service provider organizations across the country, both at the state and local level. We’ve seen an attack on Department of Labor grant programs that specifically went to lifting up women in the trades. Without that funding, those organizations—whose mission and job is to lift up women, people of color, and marginalized communities—have had to make really hard choices to keep the lights on.”
The erosion of DEI programs will also play a major role in how Black workers bounce back from this surge in unemployment.
“I think we have yet to see the full impact,” Wilson says. “It’s going to come into play on the other end of job losses, when we’re looking at how quickly people recover—and not just how quickly they recover, but what kinds of positions they recover into. The purpose of a lot of those programs wasn’t just to hire a more diverse set of workers for any kind of role—it was also [creating] opportunities for people to gain access to higher-level positions.”
What it will take to recover jobs
When Black employment is lagging, it is often a sign of a broader economic downturn, according to Khouri—so it’s not just Black workers who might be faced with job insecurity, if that’s any indicator. Since Black workers are concentrated in lower-wage jobs that are more vulnerable to fluctuations in the economy, they are often impacted first when a recession is on the horizon. (This was evident during the pandemic, when unemployment spiked to over 16% and Black workers experienced job losses at a record high.)
The ongoing backlash to corporate DEI programs is, however, far more likely to impact Black workers seeking out jobs in industries that have historically shut out those workers. In the tech industry, DEI initiatives had slowly helped bring more underrepresented groups—namely Black and Latino workers—into technical and leadership roles (even if that progress had been halting). The finance industry had made marginal progress on promoting Black employees into senior roles, and Black representation on boards had improved amid calls for greater diversity. A Bloomberg analysis found that in 2021, after many companies made significant investments in DEI efforts, the S&P 100 added more than 300,000 jobs—and a whopping 94% of those jobs were filled by people of color.
Amid an ongoing federal hiring freeze and slowing employment, Black workers may also face an uphill battle even when it comes to finding steady employment in the federal workforce—which, until now, had been a more reliable path to the middle class for Black Americans.
“The reason why we have a more diverse federal workforce is because at one point, the federal government was actually willing to sort of be a leader in establishing more equitable employment practices that were ultimately adopted in states and cities and, to some extent, the private sector,” Wilson says.
“So when we start cutting federal jobs, we’re actually cutting jobs from a sector that had—at least since the 1960s—been more of a leader in establishing equity. That may not be messaged or presented as explicitly anti-DEI, but it has that effect.”
The federal government was once a model for how equitable hiring practices could actually transform the workplace and cultivate true diversity. Now, not only has Trump culled the federal workforce—but he has also chipped away at the very DEI policies that could have offset those losses and empowered Black workers to find work in the private sector.