2025 was a challenging work year for everyone, thanks to record-high layoffs, job insecurity, and stagnant wages. Senior-level executive women are struggling more than ever, especially Black women.
Burnout and job insecurity have always put pressure on women in leadership, but they’ve been even bigger concerns than usual last year. Black women are experiencing these stressors disproportionately, according to McKinsey & Co.’s 2025 “Women in the Workplace” report. About eight in 10 Black women in leadership have often felt burned out in 2025. More than 80% are worried about job security, outpacing other senior-level women’s concerns when broken down by race.
The numbers match the anecdotes. Headlines this year have been about 2025 having the highest number of layoffs since the pandemic. It’s no secret that as Black unemployment has been rising, Black women have been pushed and kept out of the workforce in the hundreds of thousands.
To make matters more complicated, women in general are experiencing a so-called “ambition gap” due to the perceived lack of support and opportunities for higher-ranking positions for women compared to men. The report reveals that these attitudes vary with age: there’s an optimism in younger women that sinks over time.
“Young women are particularly ambitious. At the entry level, women under 30 are more interested in being promoted than young men,” McKinsey’s report says. “For employees who are over 40 and still at the entry level, there is a wide gap: 52% of women want to advance, compared to 71% of men.”
There is still a long road to reaching gender equality in the workplace, and the corporate rollback of DEI isn’t helping. It isn’t just seeming to exacerbate disproportionate effects on individuals based on race, but it’s also hurting the U.S. workforce’s progress towards gender equality. And, maybe that’s the point. Critics have been sounding alarms about this all year long, noting the recession of women in the workforce and problematic rhetoric targeting working women, including a New York Times article originally titled “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” It was renamed after backlash.
Ahead, McKinsey is recommending companies to make sure their hiring and promotion practices are based on merit first; to support employees in career development; and give junior employees access to more senior employees, to open channels for mentoring and informal support. Preventing burnout, on the other hand, takes a whole other medley of practices.