In recent appearances, President Trump has been dismissive of concerns over the Black unemployment rate, even suggesting at one point that there had been “huge drops” in unemployment for those workers.
“African American unemployment is now doing better than it’s ever done,” he said during an event in June. “And I don’t know where that stat came from, but I’ll take it.”
In truth, Black unemployment isn’t even as low as it was during Trump’s first term. The unemployment rate crossed 8% last fall and is currently hovering around 6.6%. Across racial groups, Black workers have almost always experienced a higher incidence of unemployment, with few exceptions (the pandemic being one).
As The City Reporter noted this week, Black unemployment is especially severe in some of the most diverse cities in the country—namely, New York City.
According to the report, which draws on data from the New York state comptroller, the unemployment rate for Black workers is currently about 8.8%, the highest of any city in the U.S. But it’s not just those employees whose standing has slipped in the labor market. The state data also indicated that only white workers saw their employment improve over the last year.
Another data set from the New York City Economic Development Corp. showed that while Black workers were facing the greatest impact, other racial groups had also seen a rise in unemployment: As of the first quarter of 2026, the unemployment rate was over 7% for both Hispanic and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) workers.
It’s not unusual for the unemployment rate to be significantly higher for Black workers than it is for white workers. But it’s notable that the gap in unemployment has widened to 5.6 percentage points, as of the third quarter last year. And according to The City Reporter, this is not just happening in the most populous city in the country.
The gap between Black and white unemployment has also increased in Los Angeles, albeit to a lesser degree (though Black unemployment there was particularly high in 2025 at 9.6%). In Chicago, the gap was smaller, though it persisted; meanwhile, cities like Atlanta and Dallas had relatively low Black unemployment despite seeing an uptick in Black residents in recent years.
It’s no coincidence that this shift has taken place against the backdrop of sustained attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in both the federal government and corporate America, which have taken a toll on Black employment since last year. Trump’s executive orders explicitly targeted DEI programs and employees in the public sector, but the sweeping federal layoffs in 2025 also disproportionately impacted Black workers, who are overrepresented in those jobs. While Black women were more acutely affected by those losses last year, it now seems that labor market participation for Black men is dropping more quickly.
In New York City, which has the largest Black population of any city, these forces may have been particularly damaging. As The City Reporter notes, some of the blue-collar sectors that had propped up Black employment in New York City have been on the decline, from manufacturing and construction to food service. Unemployment among young Black workers has also remained distinctly higher than the overall youth unemployment rate, which actually dropped 1.3 percentage points in 2025.
As Valerie Wilson—the director of the program on race, ethnicity, and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute—told Fast Company last December, the labor market is still rebounding from the fallout of the Trump administration’s anti-DEI policies.
The fact that unemployment remains high for Black workers suggests that they have struggled to recover from the job losses in 2025, pointing to a slower recovery than there might have been if DEI programs were as robust and well regarded as they once were.
