Attention Turns to Job Market Amid Anticipated Fed Rate Cut

Emily Dickens, head of government affairs at human resources association SHRM, said one of the biggest issues in the labor market is having enough people with the skills needed for existing and new job roles.

In his first term, President Donald Trump frequently touted record-low Black unemployment. Now, it’s rising at the fastest clip since 2020.

The unemployment rate for Black Americans has shot up by 1.5 percentage points over the last three months, a rare development outside of recessions. At 7.5%, it’s once again twice the rate for White Americans, erasing the progress made in narrowing the gap over the last three years.

Two factors have combined to create such an outcome, researchers say: First, a slowdown in the broader labor market is playing out in the usual fashion, disadvantaging Black workers who tend to be first to lose their jobs when things go south. Second is Trump’s targeted efforts to shrink the federal workforce, where Black workers are overrepresented.

“There are a number of ways the administration’s policies are slowing down the economy and hurting Black people in America, I would say, disproportionately hard,” said Algernon Austin, director of race and economic justice at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “Black America is, I think, being hit first by the downturn.”

The latest data is testing Trump’s pitch from the 2024 campaign trail, when he advertised himself as “the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.” The Black unemployment rate fell to a record-low 5.3% during his first term in 2019 before shooting up to 16.9% when the pandemic hit in 2020 and then reaching a new low of 4.8% during President Joe Biden’s term.

By the time Trump returned to office in January, it had risen to 6.2%, mirroring a gradual rise in the overall unemployment rate. The difference this year is the speed at which it’s continued to increase and the gap that has opened up between Black and White unemployment.

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