When President Trump took office last year, he promised that Black people would see an uptick in ‘Black jobs’ that he would make available to them, and a year later, it seems the community is still waiting on him to deliver on that promise.
“They’re taking Black jobs now, and it could be 18, it could be 19, or even 20 million people,” President Donald Trump said at a debate during his campaign trail about the role immigrants play in the U.S. economy. “They’re taking Black jobs, and they’re taking Hispanic jobs, and you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re going to see something that’s going to be the worst in our history.”
The notion that immigrants and the Black community share employment opportunities isn’t far-fetched, but the data indicate that immigrants are filling roles that American citizens don’t want. Derrick Johnson, CEO of the NAACP, pointed out, “There’s no such thing as a Black job or a white job.”
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in May, the Black unemployment rate dipped to 6.6 percent after reaching 7.3 percent a month prior. The national unemployment rate for all workers was 4.3 percent in the first quarter of 2026. Other data includes the white employment rate at 3.8 per-cent, the Asian unemployment rate at 3.8 percent, and Latino unemployment rate 5.0 percent.
“They’re hardworking Americans who are seeking to have quality jobs, and that should be the goal of this conversation,” he told NBC News. “In this election cycle—when researchers have found Black voters are being heavily targeted by political disinformation—it is crucial to not turn communi-ties against one another,” Johnson said.
According to new research from the Black Policy Project, a research initiative of the UCLA Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, employment for Black Californians saw a significant dip between 2024 and 2025.
In their latest biennial report in the State of Black California series, the team found that across all racial and ethnic groups, Black people had the largest single-year increase in unemployment, up from 5.6 percent in 2024 to 7.5 percent in 2025. The unemployment rate of Black Californians was double that of white Californians by the end of 2025, researchers found.
“These employment shifts are against a two-year backdrop of historic changes in federal action, closing of DEI offices, attacks on affirmative action and higher education, etc.,” said lead author Michael Stoll, a professor of public policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and faculty director of the Black Policy Project. “In this short period of time, we’ve found that many of the em-ployment pathways that Black Californians have relied on have been significantly weakened or shut off entirely.”
The researchers discovered that increases in un-employment were sharpest among those who were younger (ages 18-34) and in the prime working age (35-54). When factoring in education and gender, two unemployment statistics stood out for 2025: Black men without a high school diploma expe-rienced the highest rate of unemployment at 15.9 percent, while Black women with college degrees saw the largest unemployment increase, more than tripling, from 2.7 percent to 8.5 percent.
