Economists and the general public alike have been waiting with baited breath for the latest job report.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics was closed for over a month due to the government shutdown, and its job report on Tuesday is the first time since we’re seeing the government’s numerical temperature check on the state of U.S. employment for October and November.
It has some concerning signals for American employment overall, with the national unemployment rate creeping up slightly from 4.4% in September to 4.6% November. For Black workers, that number doesn’t capture what’s going on. In November, Black unemployment reached 8.3%, nearly double the national rate and two percentage points higher than it was at the beginning of 2025.
“If white men or women had an unemployment rate over 7%, we would be screaming. We’d be worried. This would be a problem. They keep portraying the economy is doing well, but this is very concerning,” NWLC Vice President for Research Jasmine Tucker told ESSENCE. “We’re on recession watch,” and heading into recessions, Tucker adds, Black unemployment going up is usually an early warning signal.
The jobs report also showed Black workers are also facing a more challenging environment in finding work in the first place. Those who (and aged 16 or over) are facing longer unemployment spells, with Black women facing the longest spells, per National Women’s Law Center, at an average of 14.5 weeks long. Black men are typically facing unemployment spells of about 12.1 weeks. For white women and men, it’s just 8.6 weeks and 9.6 weeks, respectively.
2025 continues to be one of the hardest years for U.S. workers since the pandemic. This year witnessed the most layoffs since 2020, with over 1.1 million job cuts announced so far. Black workers, and Black women specifically, have often borne the brunt of that burden. In the summer, reports showed that Black women were leaving the workforce in disproportionate and alarming numbers, thanks to the aforementioned federal worker layoffs, AI-inspired cuts, and rollbacks in DEI: 300,000 left between February and April alone. That number has seemingly only got exorbitantly worse: A Fortune reporter found in late November that it’s just about doubled since then.
Just two years ago, Black unemployment was at its lowest ever when it fell below 5% in April 2023. New jobs report data not only shows a concerning reversal of that trend, but it’s showing how a myriad of Trump administration policies are affecting the American economy. “We need to stress the [understanding] that… everyone is going to do better if Black women do better,” Tucker adds. Grim as they may be, these numbers are no reason to lose hope or faith in your power.