The Layoff’s You Weren’t Supposed to Notice.
What Happens When an Economy Pushes Out Its Backbone
This January, in response to a wave of quiet layoffs and forced exits, we created Displaced: Black Women & the Workforce . Through our community, and as some members of our team lived this reality, we kept hearing the same questions, fears, and exhaustion echoed back.
Within four days of opening registration, more than 200 people signed up. Within one week, an additional 180 Black women joined the waitlist. The speed of that response made something undeniable: what is happening to Black women in the workforce is not isolated, and it is not about individual failure.
There are layoffs that make headlines, and then there are layoffs that quietly reshape the economy while most people are told everything is fine. Since early 2025, more than 600,000 Black women have been economically sidelined through job losses, sustained unemployment, and forced exits from the labor force. This did not happen during a declared recession. It did not happen because the economy broadly collapsed. It was and is part of a structural pattern. A pattern that continues to grow, even as the broader economy continues to add jobs and while many people were reassured that things were stable.
Why these layoffs are easy to miss
On paper, the economy looks steady. Aggregate unemployment rates appear manageable. Growth continues in certain sectors. But averages hide enormous disparities.
Black unemployment has climbed to around 7.5 percent. Black women’s unemployment has been even higher at points throughout 2025, while white unemployment has hovered closer to 3.8 percent. Between February and June 2025, employment among Black women fell by roughly 318,000 jobs. In April alone, more than 106,000 Black women lost jobs, the largest single month loss of any demographic group. Unemployment among Black women rose sharply and stayed elevated even as other groups saw gains.
When analysts refer to over 600,000 Black women losing jobs, they are describing cumulative sidelining that includes layoffs, prolonged unemployment, and exits from the labor force tied to public sector cuts and the elimination of care, education, and equity-focused roles.
The exit economy
Economists increasingly describe what is happening as an exit economy. Growth continues, but large groups of workers are quietly pushed out through layoffs, reduced hours, stalled advancement, and the disappearance of opportunity.
This is not a recession. But it is a structural crisis for those being excluded. Black women are disproportionately affected because they are concentrated in sectors most exposed to political shifts and budget cuts, including education, health care, social services, and public administration.
Why Black women feel this first and hardest
Black women are not peripheral to the economy. They are central to how families and communities stay afloat. Nearly 70 percent of Black mothers are key breadwinners. More than half of Black households with children rely primarily on a woman’s income. In many families, when a Black woman loses her job, the household loses its main or only source of financial stability.
At the same time, Black women are disproportionately targeted by workplace discrimination and are more likely than white women to face retaliation when they speak up. Because many Black women are primary breadwinners, the risk of job loss carries not just financial consequences, but deep social and emotional weight. Shame becomes part of the equation: shame about losing income, shame about not being able to provide at the same level, shame reinforced by narratives that frame job loss as personal failure rather than structural exclusion.
As a result, many Black women remain silent or leave their jobs rather than escalate harm. Not because they do not care, but because the system frequently penalizes them for advocating for themselves. Leaving becomes a survival strategy in environments that offer little protection. When job loss does occur, the consequences are immediate and cascading, including poverty risk, housing and food insecurity, loss of health coverage, and increased unpaid caregiving.
Why the entire economy should care
Sidelining nearly 600,000 Black women from the workforce is estimated to drain roughly $9.2 billion from U.S. GDP in 2025 alone. These losses reduce consumer spending, weaken tax revenue, strain public systems, and undermine the essential sectors that support economic stability for everyone.
These exits are not simply the result of poor performance, neutral “business needs,” or unavoidable funding cuts. They reflect choices about whose jobs are treated as expendable and whose stability is protected.
Funders and supporters have a responsibility to look deeper, under the hood of the organizations they back, to understand who is being quietly pushed out, whose roles are first on the chopping block, and how racial and gendered bias shows up in staffing decisions.
Black women’s employment has long been an early signal of economic health. When they are pushed out while others remain insulated, it signals deeper structural fragility. Ignoring these layoffs does not protect the economy. It hides its fault lines. The question is not whether this matters to everyone else. The data make clear that it does. The question is whether we choose to notice the warning while there is still time to respond.
A place to process what the data cannot hold
In response to the economic displacement and emotional weight many are carrying, we are hosting a two day virtual retreat for Black women and others navigating job loss, workplace harm, and economic uncertainty. This is not about resilience theater or being told to push through. It is a space to pause, reflect, and be in community with people who understand what it means to be pushed out of systems that rely on your labor but not your dignity.
The retreat is designed to support collective processing, rest, and re-grounding at a time when many are being told the economy is fine while their lives say otherwise.
Why this moment matters
What is happening to Black women in the workforce is not a temporary disruption or an unfortunate side effect of economic transition. It is a structural pattern with compounding consequences for families, communities, and the broader economy.
Black women are central to household stability. When they are pushed out of work, entire family systems absorb the shock. Income disappears, health coverage is lost, caregiving burdens rise, and long-term financial security erodes. These impacts do not stay at the individual level. They ripple through housing stability, educational access, community health, and local economies.
At the same time, the silence around these layoffs makes the harm harder to name and address. When official narratives insist the economy is strong while large groups are quietly excluded, people are pushed to internalize what is actually systemic failure, framing job loss as personal inadequacy rather than structural exclusion.
Ignoring this moment has costs. Sidelining hundreds of thousands of Black women drains economic productivity, weakens essential sectors, and obscures deeper fragilities in the labor market. When Black women are pushed out while others remain insulated, it warns of risks that will eventually spread.
We are holding this response with care and responsibility, and it is already shaping how we think about what support must exist beyond a single moment or event. We are deeply grateful to everyone who has trusted us with their stories and shown up for one another. What this moment requires is sustained recognition and shared responsibility. It requires a willingness to build support that moves beyond survival toward naming lived experiences without shame while strengthening connection and community.
The Black Girl Health Collective
