Gena Pemberton is a Black woman who has spent her career diagnosing a way to move forward in corporate America.
She spent over two decades in leadership roles in accounting, operations and human resources at large companies such as Johnson & Johnson. But now, at 50, she is not sure what is next.
She was the chief inclusion and impact officer at Omnicom Health until the company eliminated her position in July 2025. She has been without full-time work ever since, despite applying to dozens of jobs per week and lowering her expectations on seniority and pay.
“I’ve never been unemployed for this long,” she said.
Ms. Pemberton is far from alone. Black professionals across the country have faced a triple whammy in the labor market in recent years.
The disappearance of diversity, equity and inclusion positions in big companies has heavily affected Black women; a federal government firing spree that eliminated hundreds of thousands of jobs had a heavy impact on Black workers, who are disproportionately represented on federal payrolls; and the slowdown in white-collar hiring rates has felt particularly acute for some Black businesspeople without elite networks as expansive as those of their white and Asian peers.
When unemployment for Black workers rises sharply, it can be an early signal of trouble for everyone. Rising joblessness among Black people and weak hiring rates in the business services sector are signals that the labor market is in worse shape than the overall 4.2 percent unemployment rate implies, said Jared Bernstein, who served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Hiring, for example, is proceeding at a pace analogous to the sluggish years after the Great Recession, when overall unemployment was closer to 9 percent and Black unemployment was in the midteens.
“When the economy sniffles, Black unemployment catches a cold,” he said.
In 2025, Black women experienced far greater employment losses than other women, especially college graduates and public-sector workers, according to data analyzed by Valerie Wilson, an economist. And numbers from Revelio Labs, a work force analytics firm, show that U.S. employers have cut over 2,600 roles since 2023 with “diversity” or “D.E.I.” in the job titles or descriptions.
After spiking above 8 percent in November 2025, Black unemployment fell to 6 percent by August. Then, the latest jobs report showed that unemployment for Black people had jumped back to 7 percent in September — the fastest one-month increase since 2012, not counting the brief pandemic shock. The rate is almost double the 3.6 percent rate for white workers.
“It is definitely a cause for concern,” Kevin Hassett, the generally ebullient director of the White House National Economic Council, said in an interview with CNN.
Employment levels for Black women 20 and older have been volatile and declined to 10.3 million from a record high of around 10.7 million in 2023. Nursing, health care and other social assistance jobs have held up best for Black women, mirroring the picture in the broader labor market. But at one point, the decrease in employment for Black women constituted more than half of job losses for all women.
Employment levels for Black men have fallen, too, from a peak near 10 million in 2025, yet have recovered slightly since this spring. And while Black men have experienced a decline in manufacturing jobs, they have fared better than Black women in the “professional and business services” sector, gaining over 100,000 jobs on net. Black women have lost jobs in the sector.
Unemployment figures are based on a survey of households, and economists caution against reading too much into monthly changes. That is particularly true of the estimates for individual demographic groups, which are based on relatively small sample sizes.
Ms. Pemberton, who lost her job at Omnicom Health last year, may not even technically be counted as unemployed since she has been doing consulting work while searching for a full-time position. That income has, however, been comparatively patchy.
Under Labor Department guidelines, people are considered employed if they did any work during the middle of the month when the jobs survey is conducted. This includes part-time jobs as well as freelancing, gig or contract work.
The financial cliff Ms. Pemberton has experienced has caused a strain not felt since childhood, she said, when her parents were living paycheck to paycheck some years.
“I have pretty much gutted almost all my savings — not just my savings account, but now I’m tapping into my 401(k), which means my future is impacted,” Ms. Pemberton said. “I have been looking at jobs that are probably a lower title, and lower pay, because I’ve got to figure this out.”
Using 401(k) accounts for hardship withdrawals has more than doubled in recent years, driven partly by the long-term unemployed digging into their retirement savings for emergencies.
Vina Morris, president of the New York chapter of the National Black MBA Association, a nonprofit network, said people just looking at the headline Black unemployment rate underestimated how badly the situation had deteriorated since the early 2020s, when efforts to lift longstanding barriers to Black leadership in business were in vogue.
“We’ve lost partnerships,” Ms. Morris said, regarding corporate donors. “And we’ve lost funding.”
It does not help, Ms. Morris added, that artificial intelligence has clouded and clogged the job application process — and that, in response, many managers have returned to old-school hiring tactics: picking those who seem trustworthy via word of mouth from friends and social back channels.
“We’re not in many of those rooms, don’t always have many of those same friends,” she said.
President Trump, in his first term, frequently heralded the low rate of Black unemployment and, in his second term, argued that his strict immigration policies would benefit Black Americans by keeping out low-income immigrants stealing “Black jobs.” Economists, however, have said that there is little evidence to support that claim and that Black jobs have long included higher-income careers. They note that some of Mr. Trump’s policies, particularly the government job cuts, have hurt Black workers.
Melinda Emerson, an adjunct professor at Rutgers Business School who started a work force development company, said the federal government’s rollback of support for Black entrepreneurship and minority contractors had been an enormous hit to her community.
“It’s not just unemployment,” Ms. Emerson said.
She has seen many Black contractors in her network have their government contracts canceled, she said, while accountability measures like “scorecards” for the diversity of your vendor and client relationships have vanished in corporate America — all of which have caused sales for many proprietors of color to dry up.
Ms. Emerson accused the Trump administration of fomenting a negative culture about the professionalism of people of color. She argues that the government’s racially charged language — suggesting that diversity and excellence are at odds — has trickled down into corporate values and decisions.
“So many of our clients’ budgets have gotten slashed, so we just don’t have the opportunities that we used to,” she said.
Ms. Emerson has experienced a 50 percent decline in sales since 2023, nearly all of which she attributes to anti-D.E.I. sociopolitical winds. Some of the offered pay rates, she said, are barely higher than her team’s operational costs.
“When your biggest customer calls you,” Ms. Emerson explained, “and says, ‘Melinda, I have this project for you, and I know that we should be giving you $70,000 for this, but now I’ve got 20K, will you do it?’ I mean, come on — but those are the kind of conversations we’re having.”
Some labor market experts remain hopeful. Cantrell Dumas, a senior researcher at the Joint Center, a think tank focused on economic outcomes for Black Americans, saw reasons for optimism. Black labor force participation is relatively strong, and the reversal of Black unemployment from its earlier 2025 peak shows that things can turn around again.
“The problem is not that Black workers stopped looking for work,” Mr. Dumas said. “It was that more Black workers came into the labor market and the jobs weren’t there to meet them.”
Ms. Pemberton figures her next job will be connected to her earlier roles in financial analysis.
“It’s like nobody even wants to hear the acronym D.E.I. anymore,” she said.
