The most important number in the American economy right now might be the one that looks like good news.
Start with what is plainly bad. In the latest jobs report, Black unemployment was the highest of any racial group in the country — nearly double the rate for white workers, a gap that has held month after month. And the number of Black workers actually holding jobs fell from June to July.
Against that backdrop, one number moved the “right” way. From spring into summer, the unemployment rate for Black women fell. On a chart, it looks like recovery. It isn’t.
Here is the mechanic most people have never had explained. The unemployment rate only counts people who are actively looking for work. Stop looking, and you stop being counted. You don’t show up as unemployed. You vanish from the chart.
That is what happened. Over the spring and into summer, fewer Black women were working — and far more left the labor force entirely — even as their official unemployment rate improved. The rate got better because the women who were struggling were subtracted from it. Katica Roy, a gender economist writing in a Fortune commentary, calls this “statistical exclusion”.
The contrast makes it land. Black men’s unemployment rate improved over the same months — but, as Roy writes, “the mechanism was different”: their improvement came from hiring rather than disappearance. Same direction on the chart. Opposite reality underneath.
Why were so many Black women pushed out? The Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that, at the worst stretch of the past year, Black women accounted for more than half of all job losses among women. They make up only about one in seven women in the workforce. IWPR attributes the damage to mass federal layoffs, the rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and an erratic tariff policy — that is the institute’s finding. Federal work is the sharpest example: relatively few Black women hold federal jobs, but their employment in those roles dropped by about a third, a far steeper decline than for other women or for men.
“We know that Black women are often the primary breadwinners for their families,” said Dr. Jamila K. Taylor, IWPR’s president and CEO. “So, when we are disproportionately pushed out of the workforce, the stability of entire communities is at stake.”
So what are Black women doing differently? Many stopped waiting to be hired and went out on their own. Black women are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the country. Businesses owned by Black women that employ other people grew by more than two thirds between 2017 and 2022, growth that far outpaces the rest of the economy. Counting solo operations as well, Black women now lead roughly two million businesses.
Which means the falling rate is two different things wearing the same coat. Some women gave up looking for work. Some quit looking because they went into business for themselves. Both make the official rate drop. Only one is good news — and the official number cannot tell them apart.
Be honest about the limit, too. The overwhelming majority of these businesses are one person. Few ever hire anyone, and going solo usually means no employer health insurance, no paid leave, no steady check. The surge is real, and it is impressive. It is not a replacement for what disappeared.
Dr. Jennifer Turner, co-author of the IWPR study, puts the stakes plainly: “Black women’s experiences are the ‘canary in the coal mine’ for the American economy.”
Drafted by News Observed Editorial AI, human reviewed and published.