Washington, D.C.’s skyline tells a story of prosperity. Towering federal buildings, booming development, and one of the nation’s highest concentrations of wealth have long defined the capital.
Yet beneath that image lies an economic divide that researchers say has hardened over generations, leaving Black and Latino workers consistently locked out of the city’s prosperity.
“While some residents have high-paying, high-powered jobs and extreme wealth, many other residents struggle to find employment or earn enough to afford D.C.’s high cost of living,” the DC Fiscal Policy Institute wrote in its latest report on the state of the District’s workforce. “And, in a jurisdiction that is majority people of color, Black and Latino residents have worse economic outcomes than white residents by every measure, such as unemployment, underemployment, and median wages—both during good and bad economic times.”
The findings come from “Chronic Racial Inequality Holds Back Workers and Equitable Economic Growth,” a sweeping report released in March that examines decades of employment, wage, and housing data in the District. Researchers conclude that the city’s economy remains deeply stratified along racial lines despite years of growth.
“By broad measures, the District’s economy has often looked strong, but those gauges miss massive differences in wellbeing by race and ethnicity that are chronic,” the report states.
At the center of the disparity is income. White workers in Washington earned a median hourly wage of $52.69 in 2024. Black workers earned $29.61 and Latino workers $28.79. In other words, white workers earned roughly 1.8 times as much as their Black and Latino counterparts.
Those gaps appear across industries and occupations. Even in higher-paying roles such as managers or lawyers, Black workers earn substantially less than white workers holding the same positions.
Employment statistics tell a similar story. The unemployment rate for Black residents averaged 9.9% in the third quarter of 2025. Latino unemployment stood at 7.5%. White residents faced a rate of just 3.6%, placing the District among the jurisdictions with the largest racial unemployment gaps in the country.
Underemployment reveals another layer of inequality. In 2024, 14.4% of Black workers and 12.1% of Latino workers were underemployed, compared with 3.7% of white workers.
Researchers say the disparities cannot be explained simply by education or job training.
“This reality is rooted in a long history of racism in policies and systems that denied Black and later non-Black people of color in D.C. equal access to quality education, jobs, and wealth-building opportunities,” the report explains.
Those historic barriers still shape the District’s economy today. The report traces the roots of the disparity back to the city’s earliest years when enslaved Black workers built much of the federal capital but were excluded from the wealth created there.
Later policies, including discriminatory housing practices, employment restrictions, and the exclusion of many Black occupations from early federal labor protections, further widened the gap.
One of the clearest examples appears in the cost of living. The District remains one of the most expensive places in the country to live.
Researchers found that a family of three with one adult and two children needs roughly $145,000 a year to achieve a basic standard of living in Washington. That figure is nearly two and a half times higher than the median income for Black households in the city.
Housing costs alone create enormous pressure. The fair market rent for a one-bedroom apartment reached about $2,056 a month in 2025. More than half of Black renters in the District spend over 30 percent of their income on housing, a level widely considered unaffordable.
Food, childcare, and utilities compound the burden. Residents face some of the highest grocery bills and childcare costs in the nation, with families paying an average of more than $47,000 a year for care for two young children.
“We keep trying to make D.C. something it’s not. D.C. is not Paris and the level of gentrification that has been forced on the city over the last 20 years has sucked the life and soul out of it,” the Rev. Melech Thomas, known as the “Black Twitter Pastor,” wrote on X. “Rent is high, drinks are $25, and new residents want the city’s identity to fit themselves.”
Federal Challenges Affecting District Residents
The report warns that federal workforce cuts, immigration enforcement actions, and reductions in social safety-net programs could disproportionately harm Black and Latino workers in Washington.
Federal employment has historically served as one of the most stable paths into the middle class for Black households in the District. Nearly 29% of the city’s federal workforce was Black as recently as 2024.
Researchers say reversing the disparities will require deliberate action from city leaders.
“D.C. policymakers must take strong actions, including those laid out in the final section of this report, to meet this challenging moment for Black and Latino workers and redress chronic racial disparities to make the District’s economy one in which all residents can thrive,” researchers concluded.