When One Of The Most Educated Groups Gets Laid Off, What Does That Say About America

The numbers don’t add up—or do they? We break down why black women, the most educated segment among black Americans and a cornerstone of the middle class, are experiencing historic job losses across government, healthcare, manufacturing, and construction. With unemployment touching a post-2020 high and roughly 300,000 black women exiting the labor force this year, we track how payroll cuts translate into household strain, reduced consumer spending, and community headwinds.

We zoom in on the data first—federal job losses near 97,000 since January, sector declines, and wage gaps that persist even at higher education levels—then connect it to the bigger frame. Drawing from the canon of economic thought, from Adam Smith and Booker T. Washington to W. E. B. Du Bois and Frederick Douglass, we examine how market rules, public policy, and social narratives shape who gets hired, who gets cut, and how opportunity compounds. Along the way, we call out the gap between stereotype and reality: black women drive degrees, launch companies at high rates, and anchor household finances, yet face outsize exposure when budgets shrink and priorities shift.

This conversation also charts the macro effects. When primary earners pull back, small businesses feel it, rural communities hollow out, and price pressures rise as demand softens. We unpack how DEI backlash, culture-war politics, and procurement choices intersect with real payroll decisions—and what a smarter playbook looks like: skills-based hiring, pay equity enforcement, public-sector pipeline protection, childcare stability, and capital access for women-owned firms. With the country moving toward a more diverse future, sidelining the very workers who invest most in education and civic life is a competitiveness problem we can actually solve.

Listen for a clear, data-grounded path forward and share your takeaways with us. If this resonated, subscribe, leave a review, and pass it to someone who cares about jobs, equity, and growth.

Chapters

• 0:09 Welcome And Subscribe
• 0:29 Framing The Jobs Crisis
• 0:51 Government And Industry Job Losses
• 2:03 Labor Force Exit Of Black Women
• 2:20 Ideologies Shaping Perception
• 4:38 Canon Of Black Economic Thought
• 5:54 Education, Marriage, And Income Stats
• 7:35 Small Business And Spending Power
• 8:44 Consumer Pullback And Macroeffects
• 10:32 DEI Narratives And Misconceptions
• 12:02 Demographics And Future Influence
• 13:03 Degrees, Attainment, And Layoff Paradox
• 15:46 Voting Patterns And Political Backlash
• 17:37 Closing And Subscribe

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:09

Hello everyone, I'm Al Nealy. Welcome to Listen Up Podcast. Before we get started, I'm going to ask that you follow, like, and share the channel, but most importantly, subscribe so that you can get upcoming episodes as they are released and you can help us grow our channel. Today I want to talk about unemployment amongst black women through the fall of 2025. Let's examine some of the unemployment figures to 2020. The unemployment rate is 4.3%, which is the highest it's been since 2020. I want to start with the uh federal government job losses in August alone. The government job losses are 15,000 in August. Now, since its peak in January, the federal government job losses are around 97,000 job losses. And that same time frame, what I would like to do is look at other industries. For example, let's look at the health care industry. The healthcare industry has been down forty-two thousand jobs.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34

In manufacturing and industry, jobs, job losses are 78,000.

SPEAKER_01: 1:45

Now I know in June alone, in the construction industry, there were about 6,000 jobs that were lost. I don't have to total through January what that has been for the construction industry. But since the beginning of 2025, about 300,000 black women have left the labor force. Let's talk about how we got here and let's talk about what the black woman means to the community. They represent many things, but we're going to focus on education, the middle class, and job losses for black women. One of the things that I've learned over the years is that your vision or ideology for what America should be doesn't necessarily apply to every culture, practice, or individual who exists in the United States. The divide, the tribalism, and the infighting are based on norms, practices, and ideologies and teaching that we lived our entire lives practicing, that have created how we perceive things in this country. One of the things I've learned over the years, and that's simply by talking to people and asking questions and delving into why people do what they do, is everyone judges people based on how they perceive things should go for themselves. Well, every other race or culture in America believes that they know or understand how things should be in the black community. Where did this come from? This comes from a lack of personal experiences, getting your information from only a few limited sources. But one of the things I want to make sure we all understand is I'm here to tell you, unless you've studied it on a doctoral level and you've broken it down from ideology influence, generation, maturation, and you don't, you just simply don't know. This is actually, to some extent, in the black community, is true as well. These beliefs and practices are often rooted in ideologies from generations in the past. While some of these practices exist, they are often not understood. So let's examine a few of the most notable ones. Okay, M. Smith, who talked about the free market economy and capitalism. Another popular one in the black community would be Booker T. Washington, who thought about vocational education, hard work, entrepreneurialism, which lead to integration into the American society. Let's talk about one of the most world-renowned sociologists, Dr. W. D. Du Bois. De Bois believed that business leadership should embrace some aspects of socialism because capitalism in itself systematically disadvantages the black person in America. Then another influence on the black community would be Frederick Douglass, who talked about the interconnectedness of economic, political, social equity while fighting for voting rights for all and especially women. In the last 50 years, women have made significant strides in a male-dominated workforce. Today, 69% of women in the workforce are college educated. Black women represent 30.5% of all women in the country, and they also make up the largest and the most educated group in the country. This is impressive because the black community itself makes up just a little bit over 14% of the entire U.S. population. And 52% of them are college-educated black women. The average income of a college-educated black woman is about sixty thousand dollars per year, which lags behind most other groups. Seventy percent of college-educated black women are married by the age of 40. And since the beginning of the 19th century, ascension into the black middle class has been fueled by education and a steady work history. Now, for the black community, what I've seen, black women have embraced this ideology more than black men, and they tend to be the higher income earners as opposed to black men. So let's look at some figures over the last five years. During the pandemic, there were 500,000 jobs lost in the black community today. The unemployment rate among black Americans is 70%, which is almost twice as high as any other group in the country. The black community spends about three trillion dollars in goods and services each year. Just before the pandemic, women accounted for a large portion of the small business entrepreneurial startups. With the largest group being black women through 2022, that figure was somewhere around 17% compared to the next closest group, which were white men, at 15%. However, they're still earning less than their counterparts. And while I find this encouraging, the fact that a good amount of black households will lose a large portion of income, if not, I would say about half, you know, which would clearly place them in the lower income bracket for the middle class. With the wages falling behind and the recent job cuts, black women are reluctant to spend money, take vacations, and return to college. The economy is powered through roughly about 70% of consumers having the means to spend money. When an economy isn't able to sustain that type of spending from the middle class, you'll see factors that will be difficult to keep up with wages and the cost of living, such as you'll see that rural America will be doing worse. With consumer spending down, product cost becomes higher, crime goes up. These are factors that take place with unemployment. With 77% of the women worried about uncertainty for the economy and the state of the country, they're delaying major financial decisions such as having children, buying a car, switching careers, and investing in the stock market. Donald Trump's campaign for 2025 was largely based on how much better he would be with the economy than the Biden administration. Over the last 10 months, it has shown that he's largely concerned with cultural issues. The job losses are historical. The cost of the items are amongst the highest in the country, the country's ever seen. Okay. While all this is disparaging, there are some factors and statistics that cannot be overlooked. That is, black women are largely ignored for contributions to the economy of the United States. If you strongly believe that DEI is a systematic failure for the country, you will tend to believe that black women are the face of DEI. To that, I say you may be focusing on a belief or narrative that doesn't exist. Black people make up about 14% of the entire population of the United States. What I'll say is black women have largely brought into the traditional ideology that the country was founded on, which is free market capitalism. And it's fueled by education and building step by step to achieve a greater goal with each step. The college-educated black woman is choosing to educate themselves, then get married, and have children, which usually places them somewhere in their 30s. To me, the country seems as though it's barreling down the track for economic, cultural, and humanitarian collapse. Now, the country's made up of about 40% of black and brown people. That's the entire population. And they're on track to become 50% of the population in the next 20 years. I feel like black women have positioned themselves to become major influencers in the regeneration of the next era of the future of the United States. And what I think is when you get your information from only a few sources that make the face of welfare the single black woman or the cashier at your local fast food restaurant. I believe this sets the stereotype for what the black woman is in society. This is very false. I believe this country doesn't educate its citizens to be able to prosper in a dominantly capitalistic society. And people work at entry-level jobs do so because that's the only thing they've been told to do. It's a beginning job. Most of us have started out like that. So I wouldn't be so judgmental. That job is not an indication of where a person would end up in life. That's point. What brings me to my next point. I'm sorry, 66% of all other groups of women. Now, this rate is higher than black men who are in 31%. Black women earn a majority of degrees awarded to, they earn the highest majority of degrees awarded to black students. For example, 64% of the bachelor's degrees are earned by black women. So you should ask yourself if college attending black women make up the roughly the same figure as white women, which is 64 to 66 percent, if college attending white men come in at 37%, and college attending black men come at 31%. Why is the percentage of layoffs so high for black women for black women during the Trump administration? Here are the three factors I believe are the cause. One would be the vote turnout over the last four elections. In 2024, 92% of all black women voted for Harris. In 2020, 92% voted for Biden. In 2016, 94% voted for Clinton. And from 2008 to 2012, 96% of black women voted for Obama. I believe this is upsetting to the Republicans. And because of that, it creates a culture that feeds into division, propagandize, a negative false perception. It causes social media grifters and the manuscript to use negative narratives and stereotypes for the black woman. They're loyal, they've been loyal to voting for the Democratic Party. Also, I fear that the next era of the U.S. may bring black women have embraced capitalism, education, politics, and their loyalty to a cause that's second to none. All of that positions them to be a major force to reckon with in the near future. That's why I believe there's so many job losses amongst black women. I'm Al Nealy. Catch me on next time or Listen Up. Remember to subscribe to the channel. Have a great day.