Rep. Ayanna Pressley speaks out about the rising Black women’s unemployment rate: ‘None of this is by accident’

Rep. Ayanna Pressley pens a letter to the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, urging him to act after over 300,000 Black women lost jobs since February.

After the latest United States job reports showed the unemployment rate among black women is continuing to rise, Rep. Ayana Pressley is bringing attention to the matter. 

On Tuesday, September 9, Pressley penned a letter to the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, highlighting the issue, its ongoing impact on Black women and their families, and what the labor force is losing, NBC News reported. 

“When the rest of the country gets a cold, Black folks get pneumonia,” the Massachusetts representative told the outlet.

In July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that roughly 319,000 Black women have lost their jobs since February, causing the unemployment rate for Black women to teeter between 5.8% and 6% over the last few months. 

Pressley emphasized in her letter that Black women aren’t only leading in college degrees but are also the fastest-growing demographic of entrepreneurs, and they “disproportionately serve as breadwinners for our families.”

She added, “Coupled with the fact that job openings and hires decreased overall since July 2024, you should see the current economic outlook as a glaring red flag that forbodes danger for the entire country.”

In addition to asking the Federal Reserve to collect data on changes in Black women’s employment to support future public policy, Pressley urges the Fed to uphold its declaration to promote the highest level of employment for all workers in her letter, per NBC, and emphasizes how Black women’s employment is a “key metric of the health of the U.S. economy.” 

Pressley also highlighted what she sees as a “moment of antiblackness on steroids,” pointing out that several highly appointed Black women government officials were simultaneously fired from their roles this year. 

“None of this is by accident,” Pressley said, per NBC News. “This is discriminate harm. It is precise and it is targeted. And eventually this harm will come for everyone. But the patterns of it, the precision of it, it’s a predictable playbook. It is not happenstance.”

Overall, she expressed what the United States workforce is missing out on by keeping Black women shut out. 

“It’s a loss of the wealth of knowledge, of innovation, of skills that Black women contribute every day,” she said to NBC News.

In a post on X where she shared NBC’s story, she wrote, “The rising Black women’s unemployment rate is no accident. It’s a result of Trump’s fiscally irresponsible anti-DEI policy [and] attack on federal workers—[and] it’s hurting our economy. The Fed must respond by upholding its mandate of max employment [and] ensure our economy works for all.”