RALEIGH, N.C. — Thousands of federal workers have been laid off or given immediate terminations as part of President Donald Trump’s plans to cut spending and downsize the federal government.
Black women have been disproportionately affected by those layoffs, experiencing a significant decline in employment within the federal workforce, which historically has served as a labor market for stable employment.
In July, data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed surprising numbers that more than 300,000 Black women left the federal workforce between February and April of this year.
In its September report, the bureau also reported that while the national unemployment rate sits at 4.4%, white workers have managed to stay below that national average at 3.8%.
Black men saw an increase in unemployment from 4.9% in September 2024 to 6.6% in September 2025, and Black women experienced the highest rate of unemployment at 7.5%.
“I think what is particularly troubling about that is that we don’t see that decline show up for other groups of women for whom we have data for,” said Valerie Wilson, director of The Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy. “We don’t see it in terms of employment trends for Hispanic women or white women. We also don’t see that huge of a drop-off for Black men either.”
Wilson says Black workers and women are overrepresented in the federal workforce compared to labor markets overall, because they not only offer stable employment but also competitive pay and better benefits compared to the private sector.
“The loss of those jobs, in particular, really presents a very troubling picture for the economic security of those women workers and for their families and their communities,” Wilson said.
Federal agencies that have experienced the greatest job losses also have the highest number of Black employees. The Department of Veterans Affairs employs the largest number of workers nationwide, with Black employees making up nearly a third of its workforce. Trump has announced plans to cut nearly 80,000 jobs in that department.
“It minimizes the capacity of those agencies, really, to enforce and advance a lot of the policies, the laws around equal access to things like education and housing, veterans affairs,” Wilson said.
Amid an executive order the president signed last January and recent directives, federal agencies have stopped providing data on race and gender for their employees. This detailed data had been previously collected and published through the Office of Personnel Management for years.
Wilson says this data gave experts and agencies an indication of how well they were rising to the challenge of providing a more equitable workforce.
“It’s really hard to fix something that you don’t measure and that you’re not transparent about,” Wilson said.
In November, the Labor Department announced it would not be releasing a full jobs report for October due to the government shutdown.
Spectrum News 1 reached out to the Office of Personnel Management, requesting more information on race, ethnicity and gender data for federal employees, and clarification on whether Trump’s directives would permanently alter how federal data is being collected, but it has not responded.
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