Black Americans' unemployment rate rose in September, historically a warning sign for the U.S. labor market, but economists are not panicking yet.
The unemployment rate for Black Americans hit 7% last month, up from 6% in August, according to the Labor Department's most recent jobs report. The 1% jump marked the largest monthly increase since March to April 2020, when it skyrocketed from 7% to 16.9% at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Excluding the pandemic, last month's increase was the largest since 2012.
At 7%, Black unemployment was 2.8% higher than the national rate, which ticked up from 4.1% in August to 4.2% in September.
"It's definitely cause for concern," Kevin Hassett, the White House's National Economic Council director, told
reporters after the report's release. "We're going to watch closely."
Unemployment rate for Black women sees steepest increase
The unemployment rate for Black women 20 years and older experienced an even larger jump, rising from 5.6% in August to 6.8% in September. For Black men of the same age, the unemployment rate rose from 5.6% in August to 6% in September.
While those jumps can be red flags, alarm bells aren't going off yet for Gbenga Ajilore, chief economist at the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
"There are certain times when the Black unemployment rate jumps up before overall unemployment goes up," he said. "One month does not make a trend, but it's one of those things where I'm really interested to see what next month is going to show."
Over the year, the Black unemployment rate fell from 7.6%. In September 2025, the unemployment rate was 7.5% for Black women 20 and older, and 6.7% for Black men of the same age.
Still, the unemployment rate among Black Americans remains high when compared to that of other races. Last month, the unemployment rate declined to 2.9% for Asian Americans, 3.6% for White Americans, and 4.7% for Hispanic or Latino Americans.
"Black people just are always going to have a harder time finding a job than other groups for historical reasons," Ajilore added. "If there's a recession, Black people are going to be the first fired, and actually we saw that in 2020, with the COVID pandemic."
Why did Black unemployment spike?
It's a question the Trump administration is weighing.
"We're going to study closely what the cause of it was," Hassett said. "It's highly likely related to seasonal factors and the race of people who do this kind of job as opposed to that kind of job."
According to Kory Kantenga, LinkedIn’s head of economics for the Americas, the September spike may be most easily explained by a rise in the number of Black Americans looking for work who didn't immediately find it.
"Labor force participation, specifically among Black women, was depressed over the summer," Kantenga said, adding about 300,000 Black women were "missing" from the labor force in June, July, and August, compared to the spring. "What we saw in September's data is that those women were now back in the labor force."
Black unemployment is nearly double the White rate
The Black unemployment rate has hovered at nearly double the White rate for decades, persisting through economic booms and recessions alike. Labor economists say that persistent gap is largely driven by systemic hiring discrimination and structural labor inequalities.
During downturns, Black workers are often hit hardest, experiencing steeper job losses and slower reentry into the workforce during recoveries.
This "last hired, first fired" pattern is compounded by occupational segregation: Black workers remain disproportionately concentrated in low-wage, volatile industries highly vulnerable to layoffs, automation, and broader economic shocks.
"The current rate continues the structural pattern of inequity embedded in U.S. labor markets that keeps the Black unemployment rate roughly at two times the White rate," said William Darity Jr., professor emeritus of public policy, African and African American Studies and Economics at Duke University.
Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute's Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, told USA TODAY something else may also be at play in the September results.
“It could be just the fact that we're dealing with a smaller sample size for the survey and, depending on who responds, how many people respond to the survey, that also can create some noise in terms of the measurement,“ Wilson said. "But the 2 to 1 disparity is almost always present, whether things are booming or not.”
What else is making it difficult for Black Americans to find work?
Ajilore, who served as a senior advisor in the Office of the Undersecretary for Rural Development under former President Joe Biden, said Hassett "doesn't need to look too hard" for an answer to why Black unemployment remains high. In 2025, more than 317,000 federal government workers either left their jobs or were forced out due to Trump administration downsizing. People of color and women were disproportionately affected by those cuts, according to a National Women's Law Center analysis of government data.
Of the 17,000 government jobs the Labor Department estimates were lost in September 2026, women held 11,000 or about 65% of them while making up 58.6% of the government workforce, the center said in a separate analysis.
Weaker consumer demand in a high inflation and high rate environment may cause a slowdown in industries that typically hire more workers around the holidays, according to ZipRecruiter labor economist Nicole Bachaud. Sectors like retail and leisure and hospitality tend to have higher shares of Black workers, she said, so that slowdown may disproportionately affect them.
A hiring slowdown in healthcare may also be impacting Black women who are overrepresented in the field's workforce, according to Kantenga. Typically a reliable engine of job growth, the sector added just 17,000 jobs in September.
Is this a warning sign for the US economy?
Black unemployment often serves as an indicator for the direction of unemployment overall because Black workers are disproportionately represented in industries linked to business cycles, according to Bachaud.
"When we start to see corporate tightening — much like we expect to see after the recent rise in interest rates, the high Treasury yields, just the general more expensive lending environment, high inflation — we start to see Black workers impacted first," she said. "One month can turn around pretty quickly, but these signals underneath tell us that we expect to see a slower labor market throughout the rest of the year."
It wasn't just the rise in unemployment; the September jobs report overall disappointed forecasters. U.S. employers added just 29,000 jobs — a far cry from the 76,000 added in the same month last year and from the 240,000 added in September 2024. Downward revisions to past months' payroll gains were also included in the report, reflecting a weaker summer market than previously estimated.
On the bright side, overall labor force participation ticked up after falling earlier this year, meaning more Americans were looking for work. However, they may be having trouble finding it.
After strong jobs numbers in August, "more people entered the labor force hoping that September would repeat August's success," Bachaud said. "Meanwhile, employers are responding to the macroeconomic environment with high rates and high costs, and saying, 'No, no, no. We're not ready yet to continue that hiring momentum.'"
She added that it's likely the labor force participation rate could fall again as people who re-entered the labor market find out it is still "really challenging" to land a job.
Contributing: Jessica Guynn
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Black unemployment recently spiked. It that a warning for the economy?
