Why the Spike in Black Unemployment Is an Alarming Sign of What’s to Come

The disturbing and unusual unemployment numbers for black Americans indicate that the United States is on their way to a potential recession, economists explain.

The latest employment report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics has revealed an increasingly negative employment situation for black workers, who quickly deteriorated in the last four months due to the political decisions of the Trump administration. But the relative lack of unemployment rate movement for all other racial groups – and even a tiny improvement compared to the same period for white workers, means that if the conditions do not change – this economic slowdown could be different from the global financial crisis of 2008.

This time, the black-class black Americans have the weight of the initial impact “because the federal workforce is specifically targeted,” said Gbenga Ajilore, chief economist at the center of budget and political priorities.

Between May and August, the black unemployment rate increased from 6% to 7.5%. It is the highest which has been since 2021 and the highest black unemployment rate outside the economic crisis linked to the cocoan since January 2018.

At the same time, white unemployment increased approximately 3.8% to 3.7%, while unemployment for Asians remained flat to 3.6% and increased slightly for Hispanics from 5.1% to 5.3%. Experts timed the situation of the lamentable employment of blacks even before the BLS data of last week fell, noting the impacts of the job cuts of the federal government by the Ministry of Government efficiency with Elon Musk, and the Trump administration in general, on the employment of black women. Combined with the threats and legitimate attacks of Trump against diversity, equity and inclusion in the public and private sectors, and that the decisions of the Supreme Court weakened the positive action, the experts told TPM that it was not surprising that black employment took such a success. But it is a disturbing sign where we are, and what will happen.

“I am generally not to be alarmist,” said Ajilore. “But I’m really alarmed.”

The US Federation of Government employees tried to obtain racial data on workers who have been dismissed or accepted separation plans, “and they simply give us none of this information,” said Brittany Holder, AFGE spokesperson. Holder stressed that blacks represent more than 18% of federal workers, although only about 13% of the population.

Said Ajilore, the economic situations of blacks are often a barometer for the rest of the nation. If black unemployment is increasing, this provides for a potential economic slowdown in general. But the first job losses often hit workers at low wages first. It is unique, said Ajilore, that the black middle class is so strongly impacted and first.

It is also unusual, said the researcher at work and the Algernon Austin race, to see such a dramatic increase in unemployment for a single group. During the slowdown induced by the pandemic, for example, everyone was hard and fast. In the months preceding the 2008 recession, unemployment rates for white and Hispanic workers fluctuated more spectacularly, even if it is not in locking, alongside black workers, according to BLS data.

Four months in the constant increase in black unemployment, this trend does not occur.

While the job market is getting worse (employers only added 22,000 new jobs in August, against 142,000 at the same period last year), blacks seem to try to reintegrate the workforce at higher levels than other racial groups. It seems counter-intuitive, but it could be a very early warning that people just need money.

“There are more economic difficulties in Black America now than a year ago,” said Austin, who heads the race and Economic Justice Center of the Center for Economic Research. “People must again pay their student loans, the unemployment rate increases, people are dismissed, wages stagnate … Economic difficulties can attract people who do not work in the working population, either by bringing them to find a job or simply to try to get a job.”

In response to a TPM survey, the White House praised the priorities of Trump’s policy “America First”.

“President Trump is committed to promoting an economy that creates opportunities for all Americans,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers, in an email. “His America First Agenda has created more than half a million well-paid jobs in the private sector and workers of American origin have taken into account all these employment gains since the president took office in January.”

Rogers also highlighted the “record” black unemployment rate under the first Trump administration. Black unemployment has reached historic stockings under Trump I before the pandemic blow, but this had regularly decreased under the two mandates of former Obama president. And this decreased more slowly in the first two years of Trump – from 7.5% in January 2018 to 6.4% in January 2020 – than in the last two years of Obama – from 10.3% in January 2015 to 7.5% in January 2017, according to BLS data.

New Megabill fans of Republicans The Flames said Ajilore. By finishing large strips of social security nets like Snap, Medicaid and unemployment insurance, “what they have done is to make it less useful so that if we hit a slowdown,” he said, these support systems are less available.

This safety net already eroded. The data from the US census office measuring poverty between 2023 and 2024 found that poverty increased from a slight year to the next. After the increases in the programs pandemic like SNAP were recovered by GOP legislators in 2023, the report of the census office found a now familiar trend: the blacks were injured while everyone’s situation has remained relatively stagnant.

Black poverty jumped more than 2% between 2023 and 2024, while remaining at the level of Hispanic, Aboriginal and White individuals.

A White House official said that the policies included in the Murnmark Trump II Megabill, such as “no tax on overtime and on advice” (which are both delivered with income and limitations of the industry) will eventually benefit families in the working class.

But Ajilore said that this tax and expenditure bill, which further reduces social protection programs to pay for permanent billionaire tax cuts and federal defense funding, will only exacerbate inequalities.

“More people will pass through the meshes of safety nets,” he said, “because they have created larger cracks.”