Ayanna Pressley demands Fed chair fight for Black employment

Democratic representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts calls the president of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell to fight against a disturbing trend in the labor market: a strong increase in unemployment for black workers –especially black women.

According to NBC Newswho reported for the first time on Pressley letter In Powell, 319,000 less black women were employed in July than in February, lead their unemployment rate up 1.3%. The rate for black men jumped 1.5% over the same period.

Likewise, the August Labor Statistics Office Data showed that unemployment among black women operated 2.4 points above the national average.

“The unemployment of black women has remained considerably raised since March 2025. Federal dismissals of mass labor by the current administration of Trump had a disproportionate impact, which represent approximately 12% of the federal workforce, compared to around 7% of the global labor market,” wrote Pressley.

In his letter, Pressley also pressed Powell to fill in the Fed’s mandate to promote “maximum employment” for all workers, qualified the employment of black women a “key measure of the health of the American economy” and urged the Fed to collect better data on the job losses of black women so that political decision -makers can design solutions to stop the bleeding.

“Black women … serve as well as a disproportionate way to our families,” she wrote. “When associated with the fact that job offers and hires have decreased overall since July 2024, you should see the current economic prospects as a flagrant red flag which prohibits the danger for the country.”

Pressley’s letter comes in the middle of increasing pressure on the Fed. Last month, President Donald Trump licensee The Fed governor, Lisa Cook, the first black woman to sit on the board of directors, put a fight against the independence of the Central Bank. Cook continued on shots.

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Trump also attacked Powell for refusing to reduce interest rates and exhorted him to resignWhile temporarily fulfilling a vacancy of the Fed board of directors with Stephen Miran, president of the Council of Economic Advisers of the White House.

The economic backdrop is dark. Last week Job report showed unemployment climbing at 4.3%The highest, it is outside the coronavirus pandemic in eight years. And a report from the Labor Department published on Tuesday suggests that the labor market can be even lower that originally estimated: American employers created 911,000 less jobs Until March 2025 that the first reported – the steepest revision downwards ever recorded since 2000.

The black unemployment rate has historically been higher than the national average, but in recent years it improves regularly, reaching a minimum of 4.8% in April 2023, According to NBC.

Now the defenders say that progress is moving away.

On this forehead, Pressley also blamed Elimination Diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the public and private sectors. Experts have told NBC that black women are particularly vulnerable because of these cuts, as they are more likely to occupy jobs related to DEI.

“Attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion have aggravated the negative effects on black women,” wrote Pressley, warning that barriers such as discrimination hiring and wage disparities increase when employers are “prohibited from valuing” Dei.

His letter also underlined the federal masses of Trump, emptied The black labor in Washington, DC, sending the city’s black unemployment rate which rises to 9.9%, against only 2.6% for white residents.

“We know that black women represent about 12% of the federal workforce, which, I think, consists in doubling their share of the global workforce, so losses in this sector that you expect to have a greater impact on black women,” said Valerie Rawlston Wilson, a work economist, in NBC.

Pressley gave Powell until September 30 to meet his request.

His letter actually obliges Powell to choose between the side with Trump mass program Or intervene to protect black workers – a decision that could define the future of Fed’s independence.