The promise of increasing employment for US workers doesn’t appear to include women. The latest policies and cuts to departments and grants seem to be targeting women in general, and Black women in particular. Census statistics from 2023 showed growth in equality and work for women, but have backslid since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, and the effects of DOGE, especially, since January 2025.
“Black women make up 12 percent of the federal work force, nearly double their share of the labor force overall,” reported Erica L. Green for the New York Times. That’s because Black women have chosen the federal government over private enterprise for its stability and relatively equal pay compared with the private sector. For decades, federal jobs have provided the kind of benefits that enabled them to build strong middle-class families, purchase homes, and educate their children. Nothing is stable for these women now, as tens of thousands have lost their jobs due in part to what the New York Times called a “slash-and-burn approach to shrinking the federal work force, and more completely for Black women as corporations have abandoned DEI and related jobs, “many of which were held by Black women.”
Gender economist, Katica Roy, draws perhaps the clearest picture for MSNBC, “In just three months, nearly 300,000 Black women left the U.S. labor force. Their labor force participation rate has now dropped below that of Latinas for the first time in over a year. And more than 518,000 Black women still haven’t returned to the labor force since the pandemic began, leaving their real unemployment rate just above 10 percent.” For perspective, “White women saw a job increase of 142,000, and Hispanic women of 176,000, over the same time period. White men saw the largest increase…365,000, among groups.” Black women were the only demographic to lose jobs.
And it doesn’t stop there. In May, “the Department of Labor (DOL) terminated more than two dozen grants set up to increase women’s representation in trades like construction, manufacturing, and information technology (WANTO), and to fund programs to prevent and respond to gender-based violence and workplace harassment. The grants were administered by the Women’s Bureau, an office created by congressional mandate in 1920 to support women’s employment,” reported Julianne McShane for Mother Jones. “The cuts come at a time when a new executive order was signed to expand apprenticeships to fill the growing demand for skilled trades and other occupations.” This time also marked an increase in the number of women working in construction, rising 30% between 2018 and 2023, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR).
It’s not only women who are losing out. Industries across the board – and even the U.S. economy are the biggest losers amid the recent drop in women’s employment. Roy calls “scaling back on equity…economically irresponsible.” She wrote, “When Target reversed course on DEI in early 2025, the backlash was explosive. Civil rights leaders launched a 40-day boycott, warning that the company’s rollback signaled a betrayal of the very communities that propelled its growth. Plans for a ‘Target Fast’ soon drew over 110,000 sign-ups from consumers and faith leaders pressing for accountability and investment in Black-owned businesses. The campaign delivered a direct hit: Store traffic fell 6.8% and the stock dropped 32.17%, amounting to an approximately $19B contraction of their market cap.”
Those WANTO grants, which were intended to fund apprenticeships, cut training for the labor force in construction, an industry desperate for more skilled labor. Nora Spencer, founder and CEO of Hope Renovation of North Carolina, planned to use the grant to support job training for 76 participants. She told Julianne McShane at Mother Jones, “To be losing a development program at a time that’s really critical to bringing on workers, it’s insulting to the industry. I’ve worked with builders who are like, ‘I don’t care what gender you are, I need to know if you can swing a hammer or if you can pull wire.’”
It’s worth noting that two months later, after mass public outcry from groups around the country, the Department of Labor quietly restored the $5 million of grants, spinning the move as a long-held bipartisan effort to support women, while trying to eliminate the congressionally mandated, 105-year-old Women’s Bureau that administers them as “wasteful DEI,” reported Mother Jones.
Calling DEI wasteful ignores the facts behind the economics of diversity. First, there’s profitability and all that supports it, from the design of who makes the decisions to its resilience to changing markets in this ultra-fast-moving world. Roy explains the importance of equity by the numbers for Design Observer, “Every 10% increase in intersectional gender equity drives a 1–2% bump in revenue. Companies with above-average leadership diversity see 19% more revenue from new products and services. Those with high diversity scores generate 45% of their revenue from innovation. For less equitable companies, that number drops to 26%.” With more voices, companies “make smarter, more agile, and more profitable choices, outperforming homogeneous teams 87% of the time in decision-making.” The bleak reality, “When companies slash DEI, they’re not just trimming budgets; they’re cutting off the lifeblood of their future competitiveness,” states Roy.
How does that system of supply and demand, how much things cost, who wants and/or needs them, and do they have the money to buy them affect the U.S. economy? Not in the way you would think. It turns out the billionaires don’t drive the economy. People with very little money make the greatest impact because they spend every cent on goods and services, and since they’re the breadwinners for their families, that means Black women are essential.
Taken as a group, “69% of Black mothers are breadwinners,” in contrast with “45% of all mothers”, according to a study concluded in May 2025 by the Center for American Progress (CAP). Their numbers tracked progress shown by the U.S. Census over the decades of women in the workforce through 2023. CAP credited the strong labor market at that time to the number of women employed. To bring that into perspective, labor produces the goods and services, and through their labor, workers earn money to buy goods and services. It doesn’t take a wizard to arrive at CAP’s conclusion. “To support women who bring home the bulk of their family’s income, it is critical to enact policies that help them overcome labor market barriers, including discrimination and harassment, the gender wage gap, and caregiving responsibilities,” to “strip women of their health insurance coverage and food security…as well as the lack of federal investment in work-family policies, would not only harm women but also economic output.”
CAP continues with the kind of policies we need to support breadwinning mothers, who “earn $20,000 per year less than breadwinning fathers.” And summarize the kind of policies that are needed to uplift both “families and the American economy.” Those policies include guaranteed paid family leave and sick time, as well as “affordable, accessible high-quality childcare,” rather than the seemingly anti-working-mom policies currently in place. Child Care Aware reports childcare costs have skyrocketed 29% between 2020 and 2024, costing 35% of the average earnings for a single parent, more than rent or in-state college tuition for most states. Yet, the Department of Health and Human Services only qualifies people for “federal childcare subsidies more than 7% of their annual income.”
Obviously, we have a lot of work to do. The changes being made today do not support women, especially Black women. In fact, they are doing the opposite. We are in a lose-lose situation. It’s up to us to step up and change it into a win-win for all of us. We must support our sisters and brothers, regardless of their race, culture, or background. The future is in our hands. It is in the hope of mothers caring for their families and preparing a safe and sustainable world for generations upon generations. That’s us. We’re in this together. Together we can thrive.