Pressley urges Fed chair to address Black women’s unemployment as the figure rises

Representative Ayanna Pressley, D-MASS., Takes the president of the federal reserve Jerome Powell to combat a new job report which shows a disproportionate leap in the unemployment rate for black workers, emphasizing black women.

In July, 319,000 less black women were employed in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, resulting in a 1.3% increase in the unemployment rate for black women. The rate increased by 1.5% for black men over the same period.

Pressley sent a letter to Powell on Tuesday morning, obtained exclusively by NBC News, urging the Fed to maintain its mandate to promote the highest level of employment for all workers and emphasize that the employment of black women is a “key measure of the health of the American economy”. It also called for the federal reserve to collect data on changes in the employment of black women so that the government can create public policies to prevent or stall more losses.

In addition to having an increase in the rate of registration in college, black women are the group of entrepreneurs who know the quickest growth “and serve as parents’ support for our families,” Pressley 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 reiterated on Monday that the unemployment rate for black women is “a flagrant red flag” for the overall health of American jobs. “When the rest of the country has a cold, blacks have pneumonia,” Pressley told NBC News.

Pressley also asked Powell to ensure the Fed’s autonomy after President Donald Trump dismissed the Fed governor Lisa Cook last month, creating an independence test of the Central Bank. Cook, the first black woman to sit on the board of directors, said that she had not been dismissed, and she continued Trump in layoffs. Pressley told NBC News that the dismissal of Cook and the decline of black leaders within the federal government, like Carla Hayden, the Congress Librariacaire; General CQ Brown, former president of the joint staff chiefs; And others were part of a “moment of steroid anti-black”.

“None of this is accident,” she said on Monday. “It is a prejudice to discrimination. It is precise and it is targeted. And finally this damage will come for everyone. But the models of this one, the precision of this one, it is a predictable gaming book. It is not an event.”

Employers across the country added only 22,000 jobs in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which was less than the 75,000 jobs that should be added last month. The overall unemployment rate reached 4.3%, which, apart from the height of the covid-19 pandemic, was the highest that it was in eight years. However, the unemployment rate for all workers is relatively stagnating from the start of the year, which was 4.1%. But for black workers, the unemployment rate reached 7.5% in August, a significant increase of 6% in February.

The black unemployment rate has long been higher than the rate of the general working population. But “since February 2022, the black unemployment rate is stable at 6% and even reached a minimum of 4.8% in April 2023,” said Gabrielle Smith Finnie, an economist of the spouse center for political and economic studies, a reflection group that focuses on public policies to help the communities of color.

In addition to the more systemic obstacles in terms of racial discrimination and hiring, Pressley highlighted the decline in diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the public and private sectors and the reductions in the workforce of the federal government as factors disproportionately affecting black unemployment.

“It is a loss of wealth of knowledge, innovation, skills that black women contribute every day,” she told NBC News.

Smith Finnie said that fewer entry -level jobs also contribute to the job market.

“The generalized adoption of AI also makes it more difficult for black workers to enter and enter the labor market,” she said.

Reductions of diversity, equity and inclusion programs have also affected the number of black women in the wider workforce, said Valerie Rawlston Wilson, labor economist and director of the economic policy on race, ethnicity and economy, noting that they are more compared to work in the space of Inside and outside the federal workforce.