Among the workers most likely to want a job, those aged between 25 and 54, the difference between white and Black employment is 3.5 percentage points — hovering just above the smallest in data that dates back to 1994. "Not every issue of inequity is resolved here — not every job is equal," says Skanda Amarnath, executive director at research firm Employ America. "But employment is an important part of people's welfare.
"On the one hand, Black workers, largely men, are enjoying a fairly robust labor market," says Michelle Holder, an economics professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. But on the other hand, wage gains in some cases are being pressured by inflation, Holder adds.High inflation now — and the Federal Reserve's moves to cool it — complicates the outlook for workers.
"Layoffs tend to disproportionately impact Black workers, but it's also the slowdown in hiring that can have [an] almost invisible impact on how many people are actually employed," says Zhao. It's not enough to knock them off course, but the Fed has acknowledged moves to cool inflation could ultimately hit a subset of workers particularly hard.