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69 sats \ 10 replies \ @jamalderrick OP 6h \ parent \ on: Black Women Are Taking the Hardest Labor-Market Hit of 2025 — Here’s the Data Politics_And_Law
The “marginal workers lose jobs first” explanation doesn’t fit the data. Black women are actually one of the most educated groups in the workforce. They have the highest college enrollment rate of any demographic (NCES/Pew) and strong representation in government, finance, and professional services.
The 2025 losses hit mid-career, higher-skill sectors where Black women traditionally perform strongly, not the low-wage or low-skill jobs where marginal-worker effects usually show up.
I specifically noted government layoffs and within any group there are margins
Also, college enrollment is too crude of a measure to usefully indicate human capital. Choice of major and class standing are hugely important factors. A fairly well documented phenomenon is that men select the majors that maximize their career earnings, while women select majors they're personally interested in.
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The points you’re raising don’t actually explain the 2025 data:
• “There are margins in every group.”
True but irrelevant. It doesn’t explain why Black women as a group saw the steepest losses while white women and white men didn’t.
• “Government layoffs.”
That’s part of the story, but it doesn’t explain why the impact was disproportionately concentrated on Black women compared to their peers in the same agencies.
• “College enrollment is crude.”
Maybe, but Black women have strong representation in the very degree-required sectors where the losses occurred (gov/finance/pro services), so this doesn’t account for the divergence.
• “Men pick higher-earning majors.”
Major choice years ago can’t explain a 2025 spike in unemployment, especially since white women with similar majors weren’t hit the same way.
So none of these general points actually address the core question:
Why did Black women see the largest job losses in high-skill sectors this year while white women stayed stable and white men gained jobs?
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The government layoffs weren't random. They were particularly focused on DEI offices throughout the entire government and hit ED and HHS harder than average. It might also be the case that black women opted for the buyout packages at higher rates (I haven't seen anything about that being the case, though).
Most of the time, high rates of government employment shield black women from bad labor markets because the government is not subject to market discipline. When there are unprecedented cuts in government employment, that goes the other way.
Also, many universities and private firms reduced their DEI programs. Those are disproportionately staffed by black women.
Enrollment is not the same as earned degrees. Black women have lower graduation rates than either white women or white men. It's just not the relevant metric for this discussion.
The answer to your question is going to be the subject of years of forthcoming research done by labor economists other than myself. These are just my initial thoughts and first pass at forming hypotheses.
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The federal-cuts point is your strongest argument, but it only explains part of the pattern. Black women also saw major 2025 losses in finance, transportation, and professional services, where white women didn’t and white men gained.
I agree that the buyout idea is speculative and not supported by data or historic patterns for mid-career workers. The DEI-only framing is too small to account for losses across multiple sectors. And major-choice or graduation-rate differences can’t explain a sudden 2025 spike, especially since Black women remain one of the most educated and professionally qualified demographics.
So the gov-cuts argument fits within a single-sector frame, but the rest doesn’t match the timing, scale, or cross-sector divergence.
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I agree that DEI or other similar initiatives is likely too small to make up the whole difference, but you have to start somewhere and start unravelling the knot.
If you recall, you brought up college enrollment as evidence that black women were more highly skilled than average. I only brought up graduation rates and major choice to refute that erroneous point. I never claimed differences in graduation rates or major selection explained anything about this unemployment pattern.
However, as I've given this more thought, I do think the best mileage will come from looking more granularly at what specific jobs within those sectors are/were being done disproportionately by black women. There's a lot of task heterogeneity within a broad sector like finance or government.
Another possibility that occurred to me is that employers may perceive laxer enforcement of affirmative action laws under this administration and are cutting employees who had been hired for that reason. This would be a version of my original thought about cutting marginal workers.
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Since you’re framing this in terms of sector patterns and shifting legal incentives, this piece gives the broader context behind those dynamics. It lays out the structural factors that fit the mechanisms you’re describing:
The Second Reconstruction: The Legal, Immoral, and Political Effort to Reverse it #1288677
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Thanks, I missed that when it was first posted. I'll take a look at it tomorrow.
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I didn’t bring up enrollment. My point was simply that, as a demographic, Black women possess higher levels of professional experience and educational attainment than most groups, especially in the sectors where the 2025 losses occurred.
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And that point is not correct, because they do not finish their college degrees at a higher rate than white or Asian students. All of the measurable gains from education occur at graduation. Enrollment is irrelevant.
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Graduation-rate comparisons to white or Asian students are completely irrelevant to the labor-market reality behind the 2025 pattern. The meaningful metrics here are per-capita and per-sector, not broad racial graduation averages.
• Per capita, Black women earn more bachelor’s degrees than white men and are the most educated demographic within their racial group (NCES/Brookings).
• Per sector, Black women are strongly represented and highly credentialed in the exact fields where the 2025 losses occurred — government, finance, transportation, and professional services (OPM/EEOC).
• These sectors require degrees, certifications, and mid-career experience, and Black women hold those qualifications at above-average rates.
So education or skill levels cannot explain why Black women saw the sharpest 2025 losses while white women stayed stable and white men gained jobs. Graduation-rate comparisons have nothing to do with the timing, sectors, or scale of what happened.