Black unemployment rate slightly dips, but Trump’s new 2027 ‘woke’ budget cuts threaten Black economy

“The very programs the Trump administration rails against as ‘woke,’ normal households all across the country simply see as critical to their survival.”

The Black unemployment rate slightly dipped in March, showing modest signs of improvement for Black workers; however, critics warn that President Donald Trump’s newly proposed budget for FY2027 threatens to further drive economic disparities for Black Americans.

The new jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the unemployment rate for Black Americans dropped to 7.1%, down slightly from 7.7% the prior month.

Economists tell theGrio that while the new jobs report is encouraging, pain points still exist for Black American workers, especially amid looming federal cuts to services and programming.

“The decline in the Black unemployed from 7.7% to 7.1% is significant and encouraging. But don’t be surprised if it rises again as month-to-month changes obscure the overall trajectory,” said Andre Perry, a leading racial and structural inequality researcher at The Brookings Institution. He told The Grio, “The unemployment rate is still troublesome as there seem to be fewer available jobs overall and fewer people seeking them.”

Angela Hanks, chief of policy programs at The Century Foundation and a former U.S. Labor Department official, told theGrio, “While this month’s decline in the Black unemployment rate is welcome, it is still nearly a point higher than it was a year ago and double the white unemployment rate.”

Hanks added, “Moreover, the domestic cuts the President proposed in his FY 2027 budget, combined with cuts to health care, food assistance, and education in his 2025 budget law and an ill-advised war with Iran, threaten to drive Black unemployment higher over the long term.” 

On Friday, President Donald Trump unveiled his 2027 budget, which includes a 10% cut to discretionary spending and a record $500 million increase in military spending. The White House also published a “Cuts to Woke Programs” list, highlighting budget cuts to several programs aimed at boosting Black employment and entrepreneurship.

Those cuts include the elimination of the Minority Business Development Agency, which the Trump administration said funded “many divisive and discriminatory projects, limiting award eligibility on the basis of race and ethnicity, only supporting businesses owned by designated ‘minority’ groups.” The White House specifically highlights $3 million that was previously awarded to a national Black Lives Matter organization, ‘whose president declared that antifa rioters during the Summer 2020 riots were ‘White Supremacists’ and ‘Russians’ in disguise.'”

The Trump budget proposal also makes cuts of hundreds of millions to various racial equity programs, including environmental justice, housing assistance, healthcare research, and education programs to drive literacy and create pipelines for diverse teachers.

The White House is also proposing eliminating the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund, citing former Vice President Kamala Harris’s involvement in the Fund’s Equitable Recovery Program to build a “more equitable, resilient economy.” During the Biden-Harris administration, investments in CDFIs through the Treasury Department were used to bolster community banks to issue loans to Black-owned businesses, which often face higher denial rates from larger, traditional banks.

“Trump’s economy has added fewer than 300,000 jobs in the past year, and the unemployment rate for Black Americans is still at pandemic-era levels. Those two pieces of data are scary to you and me, but for the White House, this is what their agenda called for the entire time,” said Brandon Weathersby, a spokesperson for the political research firm American Bridge 21st Century. “The latest budget request would gut another $73 billion from the programs that keep families afloat and put the American Dream within reach. The very programs the Trump administration rails against as ‘woke,’ normal households all across the country simply see as critical to their survival.”

Weathersby continued, “Meanwhile, Trump is burning through at least a billion dollars a day on a war in Iran that nobody voted for and nobody wanted. Instead of feeding families, this administration is prioritizing dropping bombs in the Middle East.” He added, “This war’s true cost is measured in the children who go hungry, the families stretched past their breaking point, and the futures gutted so that Trump can wage aimless wars across the globe. The MAGA agenda has always had its priorities, and now every American can see them plainly.”