Over the past few months, something deeply troubling has been unfolding in plain sight: More than 300,000 Black women have left or been pushed out of the U.S. labor force. Since the onset of the pandemic, that number doubles to nearly 600,000 Black women who have not returned to the American workforce. This is an economic and civic emergency.
Between February and July 2025, Black women lost 319,000 jobs across sectors. In April 2025 alone, Black women lost 106,000 jobs — the steepest drop of any demographic group in that month. The unemployment rate for Black women has climbed from 5.1% (March) to 6.1% (April), 6.2% (May), before easing to approximately 5.8% (June). In the D.C. region, federal employment dropped about 1.9% between January and May 2025, contributing to a broader federal downsizing of some 22,100 jobs in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia corridor.
These numbers are shocking, especially when considering that federal jobs have historically been a stronger foothold for Black women seeking middle-class stability. When those ladders are pulled away, the impacts intensify.
In many communities, Black women serve as anchors: wage-earners, mothers, entrepreneurs, caregivers, role models, community organizers. When the job security pipeline is disrupted, it impacts individual households as well as cities and states.
D.C. has always been a window where national policy, equity struggles and racial justice are often in opposition to each other. If we do nothing, the losses D.C.’s Black women are absorbing won’t stop here — this will cascade outward: into stronger inequality, deeper neighborhood disinvestment, weaker tax bases, more foreclosures and more people opting out of civic engagement.
But D.C. can lead. We can show the nation how to protect the most vulnerable first. We can rescue the talent from leaving the city. We can demonstrate how municipal, community and policy interventions can reclaim what is being lost federally.
Black women are often the first to be cut in a downturn, the first to be left behind — because of intersecting marginalities. In D.C., this is not acceptable. When we lean in to support our women of color, the benefits flow outward: to all children, all neighborhoods, the broader workforce and the district overall.
This is not a niche fight or a demographic cause. We are facing an existential battle for the economic health, social integrity and moral credibility of D.C. If we lose sight of the most impacted, we will lose more than jobs — we will lose our promise, our spirit.
We have the agencies, the institutions and the civic muscle to fight back. D.C. must rebuild and become stronger and more just.