College-educated Black workers are finding themselves left behind.
Earlier this spring, I spent time in Little Rock reporting on a group of four friends, all women, who have unexpectedly found themselves facing the same problem: They’re Black, educated and unemployed. In a new story, The Washington Post examines how these four women are navigating this increasingly common reality in the United States. Along the way, data reporter Lydia Sidhom and I discovered some remarkable takeaways.
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Black unemployment has always been higher than it has for White people, but not quite like this. At the end of the Biden administration, economists and civil rights leaders were pleased that the typical gap between the rate of Black unemployment and White employment rate was narrowing. But the ratio began to increase rapidly after President Donald Trump took office, peaking at 2 to 1 at the end of 2025 and barely budging since. The only other times that gap has widened in similar fashion this century was during the economic shocks of the Great Recession and the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump vowed to save “Black jobs” when he ran for president in 2024. But in his first year in office, The Post found that one of the biggest causes for the rise in Black unemployment was his administration’s policies. Cuts to the federal workforce disproportionately impacted the Black community, where government jobs have long been viewed as a stable path to the middle-class. Tariffs and concern that accusations of “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion) practices could draw extra scrutiny have slowed hiring. By December 2025, White Americans were largely keeping their paychecks. Black Americans were losing them.
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In his first term, Trump cited the low Black unemployment rate as a reason that he had done “more for the Black community than anybody since Abraham Lincoln.” In 2018, The Post found, he spoke about the Black unemployment rate in nearly 30 percent of his speeches. But in 2025, as Black Americans found themselves increasingly left behind, he did not mention the issue in a single speech. He finally mentioned the Black unemployment rate at a June roundtable in Wisconsin, falsely telling the crowd that the rate was doing “better than ever” and then adding he did not know from “where the hell that stat came.”
No one has been hit harder by this trend than college-educated Black women, who have struggled to find gainful employment since disproportionately losing their jobs. For Black women in the South, this rocky stretch has forced them to rethink the American adage that hard-work and an education would yield undeniable success. “When you start seeing so many people in your circle, you wonder, what is it?” Chemeka Cooper, a project manager in Little Rock who has been unemployed for almost a year, told me.
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