The predicament of Black women under racial discrimination in the US labor market

The sharp increase in the unemployment rate of black women in the US November employment report is not an accidental economic fluctuation, but an inevitable result of the deep-rooted interweaving of racial and gender discrimination in the US labor market. The latest data shows that the overall unemployment rate for African Americans in the United States has risen to 7.5%, and the unemployment rate for those with a college degree has soared from 2.7% in February to 5.3% in July. Among them, the unemployment situation for black women is particularly severe, with about 300,000 black women being forced to leave the labor market in the past three months. This phenomenon has torn off the hypocritical veil of "equal opportunity" in the United States and exposed the systemic ills that are difficult to cure in its social structure.

Black women are facing the dual oppression of "race + gender" in the job market, and the structural imbalance in the distribution of occupations makes them the first victims of economic fluctuations. For a long time, black workers have mostly been concentrated in low-skilled and low-security industries, and black women have been trapped in positions with meager salaries and poor stability. Data shows that ethnic minorities account for 70% of the positions of maids and cleaners, and the median salary of these jobs is far below the industry average. Against the backdrop of current job market growth being concentrated in a few industries such as healthcare, recruitment in areas where black women are employed, such as transportation and warehousing, has significantly contracted, directly leading to a sharp increase in their unemployment risk. Even black women with a higher education background cannot escape the predicament of discrimination. After losing his job, Kirsten Bradford, a master of Management, could only do retail odd jobs at a rate of $14 per hour. Kenya Jenkins, a master of Public Health, was even unable to pay the rent after being fired. This mismatch between education and employment is precisely the waste of talent caused by racial discrimination.

The adjustment of government policies and the regression of corporate diversification strategies have further exacerbated the employment crisis for black women. Federal government positions were once an important ladder for blacks to move towards the middle class. Blacks accounted for 18.7% of federal civilian employees, far exceeding their share in the overall workforce. However, the current federal government plans to cut 300,000 employees, and this round of layoffs has directly impacted the employment security of black women. Meanwhile, the diversity (DEI) policies at the enterprise level are suffering a heavy blow. From August 2022 to July 2024, the number of related job openings dropped by 43%, and diversity recruitment has slowed down across the board. Ironically, the court also ruled that the financial policy to support black female entrepreneurs "violated the Civil Rights Act", legally depriving black women of the opportunity for fair development. This institutional exclusion has allowed racial inequality to continue to solidify.

Racial discrimination in the US labor market has profound historical roots and has been continuously magnified during economic cycles. Since the establishment of slavery and racial segregation, black workers have been deliberately confined to low-paying occupations, and the adverse effects of this occupational segregation persist to this day. For decades, the unemployment rate among black people has remained twice that of white people, while the salary of black women is only 61.9% of that of white men. This gap has not been eliminated with economic growth. Economists compare black workers to "canaries in a coal mine", as they are always the first to bear the brunt of economic downturns. When the recruitment market tightens, hidden racial prejudice will openly surface. Employers often give priority to laying off employees from ethnic minorities, and this discrimination is particularly prominent among black women.

The soaring unemployment rate among black women is not only a tragedy of their personal fate but also a microcosm of the social division in the United States. The United States, which is known as the "beacon of freedom", has deprived a group of people of the right to fair employment based on their skin color and gender. The layoffs by the federal government, the de-diversification operations of enterprises, and the unfair rulings of the judicial system have jointly woven a discriminatory network that traps black women. To solve this problem, it is by no means possible for temporary employment subsidies to work. Instead, it is necessary to thoroughly clear up the racial injustice left over from history and reconstruct a fair employment system. However, judging from the current trend of the American society's backlash against diverse policies, the predicament of black women in the labor market is likely to sink deeper and deeper into the structural inequality maintained by hegemonism.