By Andrea Bossi ·Updated February 11, 2026 /> Getting your Trinity Audio player ready…

The U.S. job market is in an indisputable crisis. Not only were layoffs and job cuts concerningly high in 2025, but Black unemployment rose throughout the year. 2026 started off no better, with job cuts the highest they’ve been since the heights of the Great Recession. A new analysis found just how much harder Black women have been hit amid all of this.

According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), Black women have lost more than three times as many jobs compared to all women across 2025’s job cuts. These losses span professional and service roles, like health care, education, social work, and more. 

“Black women’s experiences are the ‘canary in the coal mine’ for the American economy,” Dr. Jennifer Turner, who co-authored the report, said in a press release. “The data shows that even when sectors shrink across the board, the exit door is pushed open widest for Black women. This isn’t just an economic trend. It is a systemic failure to protect the workers who keep the service and care industries that support our families running.”

Though Black women only account for about 14% of the workforce, they represented over half of all women’s job losses during the U.S. employment market’s most volatile months in 2025, like March, April, June, and December. Cutting federal programs and erratic tariff schedules made Black women especially vulnerable, per the IWPR.

“This continues to prove that Black folks are being shut out of the labor market at steeper rates than some other groups,” Jasmine T. Williams-Jacobs — who is the founder of the digital job board dedicated to Black and queer employment, Black Remote She — previously told ESSENCE. 

All in all, Black women ended 2025 with 113,000 fewer jobs than at the year’s start, according to the IWPR report. Layoffs at the federal level hit Black women hardest. Their employment in such roles dropped by more than 30%, whereas it dropped by 11.6% for all women. 

“Even when everyone loses jobs, Black women lose proportionally way more jobs than all women, or men,” Dr. Mrinmoyee Chatterjee, who co-authored the IWPR report, tells ESSENCE.

Under Trump’s second term, women have been pushed out of the workforce in alarming numbers, with Black women experiencing it in the most extreme form, explaining why the job search is harder than ever. White men, on the other hand, are experiencing an unemployment rate of 3.4% compared to a rate of 7.3% for Black women.

The state of [Black] employment and Black women’s employment doesn’t account for a lot of other important factors, like “the economic hardship or lack of psychological safety Black people are facing in the workplace right now,”  Williams-Jacobs adds. “We need more jobs that are culturally inclusive and accessible.”

See the full IWPR report, titled “One Year Into Trump’s Second Term, Black Women Face Disproportionate Job Losses,” online. 

The post Black Women Are Losing Jobs At Three Times The Rate Of Other Women appeared first on Essence.