Key takeaways:

• Misclassification of workers as independent contractors is a pervasive and widespread problem. AAPI workers are overrepresented in three of the 11 commonly misclassified occupations: manicurists and pedicurists, home health aides, and personal care aides. Vietnamese, Bangladeshi, Filipino, Samoan, and other Pacific Islander workers are overrepresented within these occupations.
• Groups with lower median hourly wages also have larger shares of their working populations in the 11 commonly misclassified occupations.
• Federal protections against misclassification are limited and currently under attack by the Trump administration. The state and local landscape for curbing misclassification is varied, which leaves some workers less protected than others.

In March, EPI published updated research highlighting the cost to workers of being misclassified as an independent contractor for 11 commonly misclassified occupations. Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) workers were overrepresented in three of those occupations—manicurists and pedicurists, home health aides, and personal care aides—relative to their share of the overall workforce.

Most federal, state, and local labor laws apply only to employees and not to independent contractors, so misclassification strips workers of key protections such as minimum wage laws or qualifying for employer-provided health insurance and retirement benefits. Additionally, both misclassified workers and social insurance funds lose out on income: the report conservatively estimates that for the three jobs in which AAPI workers are overrepresented, misclassification costs workers at least $7,000 annually and costs social insurance programs $600 to $800 per worker each year.

With the understanding that the umbrella term “AAPI” encompasses an immensely diverse population both in ethnic origin but also in economic outcomes, this piece goes beyond the narrow view that all AAPI workers are high-wage earners. Below, we provide more detail on which groups of AAPI workers are most likely to be employed in lower-wage commonly misclassified occupations.

Disaggregated data shed light on particular AAPI communities that may be vulnerable to misclassification

Across all occupations, AAPI workers comprise approximately 8% of the total workforce. For three of the 11 occupations highlighted in the report—manicurists and pedicurists, home health aides, and personal care aides—AAPI workers make up 67%, 13%, and 10% of employment, respectively, according to Current Population Survey (CPS) data.

Table 1 provides a detailed breakdown of the composition of the AAPI workforce for the three occupations in which AAPI workers are overrepresented. Here, we use the American Community Survey (ACS) as it offers detailed race definitions which the CPS does not offer due to sample size restrictions.

Asian Indian and Chinese populations combined make up over 40% of the working-age AAPI population, thus their relatively large shares of the AAPI workforce in these occupations are not surprising. However, several groups are disproportionately represented across these occupations compared with their share of the overall AAPI workforce.

For example, Bangladeshi workers make up 5.1% of AAPI workers employed as home health aides while only constituting 1.1% of the total AAPI workforce. Chinese workers represent almost half (47.7%) of AAPI home health aides while representing just over one-fifth of the overall AAPI workforce (20.9%). AAPI employment among manicurists and pedicurists is largely held by those of Vietnamese origin (71.4%).

Finally, a majority of AAPI personal care aides are either Filipino (32.8%) or Chinese (20.8%). Filipino workers, however, are overrepresented by twice their share of the overall workforce. While Samoans and other Pacific Islanders comprised a much smaller share of personal care aide employment, they are also overrepresented in this occupation by more than twice their share of the overall workforce.

Table 1

Figure A provides a more comprehensive picture of the share of each detailed group employed across all 11 commonly misclassified occupations, revealing that smaller communities—often overlooked because of their size relative to the aggregate AAPI workforce—may be among the most vulnerable to misclassification. Workers belonging to seven of those groups are more likely than the average U.S. worker to be employed in one of those occupations. Almost 20% of Vietnamese workers are employed in one of those occupations, with over half concentrated as manicurists and pedicurists.

Samoan, Hawaiian, and other Pacific Islanders have the next highest shares working in the 11 occupations, making up 15% or more of their total working-age population. These groups also earn lower median hourly wages than the national median and the aggregate AAPI median hourly wage. Their disproportionate representation in commonly misclassified occupations further exposes these workers to wage suppression due to misclassification.

Misclassification enforcement varies by state—meaning different AAPI populations can be disproportionately impacted

Federal protections from misclassification are limited and are currently under attack by the Trump administration, which has proposed a rule to weaken standards to determine worker classification under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Protection Act. The proposed rule narrows the definition of who is a covered employee under these statutes, encouraging employer schemes to reclassify their employees as independent contractors to evade those obligations.

Broadly, the Trump administration has been actively dismantling long-standing federal worker protections, leaving states to bear the responsibility of ensuring workers are given rights and protections and that they can exercise them. For most states, labor and employment protections only apply to workers classified as employees, meaning workers misclassified as independent contractors are denied their legal rights and protections.

EPI’s 2026 misclassification report outlines state and federal policy recommendations that ensure proper enforcement mechanisms to curb misclassification. One of the recommendations includes implementing the ABC test. Unlike the six-part “economic reality” test or the “common law” test, the ABC test presumes that a worker is an employee unless they can demonstrate they are an independent contractor based on three criteria. Placing the onus on the employer to determine the employment status of a worker provides protections against misclassification and extends proper protections to workers. Many states have adopted the ABC test for unemployment insurance programs and, to a lesser extent, for wage and hour orders and other employment applications.

As shown in Figure B, The AAPI population is highly concentrated across a handful of states. Almost half of the prime-age working Asian population is concentrated in California, New York, and Texas, and a majority of the Pacific Islander population resides in California, Hawaii, and Washington. Overall, 21 states have significant numbers of AAPI residents, and some are home to large shares of specific AAPI communities. For example, the Hmong community in Minnesota and the Burmese community in Indiana are concentrated in states that have smaller total AAPI populations.

The current landscape for state policy protections against misclassification is quite varied. For example, among the states with the largest AAPI populations, California is the only state to adopt the ABC test for both unemployment insurance and employment law, although certain occupations are exempt from the test—including app-based drivers. California also institutes penalties for misclassifying a worker, which can include restitution payments and, if the misclassification was willful, a penalty between $5,000 to $25,000 per violation.

Texas, on the other hand, has significantly less state enforcement. Apart from using the common law test for its unemployment insurance program and providing a definition of an independent contractor for workers’ compensation, Texas mainly relies on federal law for classifying workers as employees. In the last 15 years, Texas lawmakers have introduced several bills that would create penalties for misclassifying workers in the construction industry, but all have stalled or failed.

Figure B

Comprehensive protections are needed to protect workers from misclassification

AAPI workers are facing multi-pronged attacks from the Trump administration through the degradation of federal protections for workers, immigration, and equity. Occupational segregation and other labor market disparities lead women, people of color, and immigrants to be disproportionately represented in occupations that are commonly misclassified. These factors—in addition to historical and current geopolitical relations that shape the flow of labor to the U.S., immigration and citizenship status, and English language proficiency—can contribute to the concentration of AAPI workers in these occupations. Disaggregated data further identify which specific AAPI communities are overrepresented, revealing that smaller, less economically secure groups are often most exposed to the costs of misclassification. Strong policies at the federal, state, and local levels are needed to combat misclassification and to ensure workers can exercise their rights.

Table 1

The benefits of raising the minimum wage

Raising the minimum wage is a research-backed policy that increases earnings for low-wage workers without causing increases in unemployment or other negative economic side effects. A strong wage floor is also a powerful tool for making a more equitable economy. Almost two-thirds of the workers who would be affected by SQ 832 are women (63.3%). The policy would also disproportionately benefit workers of color. Hispanic workers make up 18.2% of the affected workers, compared with 11.0% of the total Oklahoma workforce. Black workers would be 10.6% of affected workers, while only making up 7.1% of the workforce (see Table 3).

The policy would also provide critical support to workers experiencing significant economic insecurity. Nearly three-fifths (59.3%) of the affected workers have incomes below 200% of the poverty line. Research shows that raising the minimum wage significantly reduces poverty, even as higher wages simultaneously reduce some workers’ and families’ eligibility for, and reliance on, public assistance programs.

A higher minimum wage would help combat the affordability crisis

While dozens of states and cities have passed minimum wage increases over the past 15 years, Oklahoma is one of 20 states that still uses the dismally low federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Policymakers have not raised the federal minimum wage since July 2009, meaning that as prices throughout the economy have risen, the buying power of a paycheck at the federal minimum wage has fallen—substantially. Adjusting for inflation, the federal minimum wage is worth 30% less than it was in 2009. In fact, since 2025, the federal minimum wage has officially been a poverty-level wage under the Department of Health and Human Services’ guidelines. The stagnant federal minimum wage is one example of how economic policy in recent decades has suppressed workers’ wage growth, squeezing them as prices have continued to rise and creating the affordability crisis.

Fortunately, SQ 832 would not only raise the state minimum wage to more adequate levels, but also automatically adjust it for inflation beginning in 2030. Twenty-one states already use these automatic increases to ensure that low-wage workers don’t lose ground over time as prices rise.

SQ 832 would go a long way toward improving conditions for the lowest-paid workers in the state as they contend with rising housing, energy, and health insurance costs. However, the reality is that most Oklahoma workers face higher living costs than can be supported by a $15-per-hour wage. Figure A shows estimates of a living wage for a single adult in different Oklahoma metro areas using EPI’s Family Budget Calculator. All Oklahoma metro areas have living wages above $16 an hour. Workers in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Lincoln County must earn at least $18 an hour to meet the Family Budget Calculator threshold. Even the lowest-cost county in the state (McIntosh County, not shown) has a living wage greater than $15 an hour.

Figure A

SQ 832’s $15 target would help hundreds of thousands of Oklahoma workers earn closer to a living wage and put Oklahoma’s wage standards more in line with many other states. As of January 2026, 17 states and the District of Columbia had at least a $15 minimum wage—including states such as Arizona, Missouri, and Nebraska.

Lawmakers and voters in many states have adopted higher state and local minimum wages both in response to federal inaction and because economic research has reached a strong consensus that raising the minimum wage, at least to levels attempted thus far, has not caused any measurable harm to employment.  

A $15 minimum wage in Oklahoma is not an outlier compared with policies in other states, even after accounting for differences in the labor markets of different jurisdictions. Economists use the minimum-to-median wage ratio (sometimes called the Kaitz index) to assess the “bite” or strength of the wage floor relative to wage levels in the area where the policy is taking place. This measure allows us to see how a $15 minimum wage compares in New York and Oklahoma, where the overall distribution of wages is substantially different. Most minimum wage research has studied policies with minimum-to-median wage ratios of .67 or less (i.e., a minimum wage raised as high as two-thirds the median wage in the same jurisdiction.) Table 2 shows the current and projected path of Oklahoma’s minimum-to-median wage ratio if SB 832 passes. The ratio would grow as the policy goes into effect, but it would likely never exceed 60%—meaning it is solidly in the range of policies that economists have studied and found no negative effect on employment.

Table 2

Oklahoma’s current minimum wage suppresses pay for workers

Establishing and periodically raising a strong wage floor is necessary to counteract employers’ excess market power over workers, which keeps wages lower than they would be in a truly competitive market. Workers face a multitude of barriers which provide wage-setting leverage for employers. Workers often have limited information about wages and work policies at alternative employers and can be constrained in their job choices by limited transportation options or the need to maintain specific schedules for child care and other family needs. Low-wage workers typically have less financial ability than higher-wage workers to overcome these obstacles, and are more likely to encounter take-it-or-leave-it wage offers that prevent them from negotiating pay. These challenges (sometimes called “frictions”) add up, providing leverage for employers to pay lower wages than workers need—and lower than what is optimal for the local economy.

Oklahoma’s weak wage floor suppresses pay for hundreds of thousands of workers. The state has the third-highest share of workers earning less than $15 an hour (21%). Although there are relatively few workers who earn exactly $7.25 an hour, one undervalued benefit of a strong wage floor is that it supplies upwards pressure on the wages of low-wage workers who earn more than the minimum wage. These “spillover effects” mean that workers above the new minimum wage threshold also see wage increases as employers adjust other workers’ pay to maintain wage ladders and preserve seniority.

Oklahomans have a consequential opportunity to strengthen the wage floor and deliver a meaningful raise to hundreds of thousands of workers. A $15 minimum wage is evidence-backed, both by rigorous economic research and the recent experience of many other states. SQ 832 would support families as they struggle with the affordability crisis and generate lasting improvements to the health and equity of the economy.

Table 3

Key takeaways:

• The persistent gender wage gap widened slightly in 2025; women were paid 18.6% less than men on average after controlling for race and ethnicity, education, age, marital status, and state.
• Women are paid less than men across all education levels. Women with a graduate degree earn less, on average, than men with only a college degree.

• The gender pay gap worsened following a year of Trump administration attacks on workers, including cuts to the federal workforce; attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts; ordering mass deportations; and undermining child care and home care providers.
• States can narrow the gender pay gap with policies that guarantee access to paid family and medical leave, mandate pay transparency, raise the minimum wage, and make it easier for workers to form unions.

March 26 is Equal Pay Day, a reminder that there is still a significant pay gap between men and women in our country. The date represents how far into 2026 women would have to work on top of the hours they worked in 2025 simply to match what men were paid in 2025.

On an hourly basis, women were paid 18.6% less on average than men in 2025, after controlling for race and ethnicity, education, age, marital status, and state. After narrowing to a series low of 18.0% in 2024—likely driven by a strong labor market recovery from the COVID-19 recession that lifted wages more at the lower end of the overall wage distribution—the gender wage gap widened slightly in 2025. Though far from a total reversal of the last few years’ progress, the slight worsening in 2025 reflects the slowing of low-end wage growth and the economic consequences of Trump’s first year back in office.

Women are paid less than men due to discrimination associated with occupational segregation, devaluation of women’s work, and societal norms, much of which takes root well before women enter the labor market. The wage gap is smallest among lower-wage workers partly because the minimum wage creates a wage floor. At the 10th percentile, women are paid $1.39 (or 9.1%) less an hour than men, while the wage gap at the middle is $4.12 an hour (or 14.7%). Women at the 90th percentile of their wage distribution are paid $14.05 (or 19.6%) less an hour than men at the 90th percentile of the wage distribution.

Women are paid less than men at every education level

Although women have seen gains in educational attainment over the last five decades, they still face a significant wage gap. Among workers, women slightly outnumber men in the college-educated labor force and are significantly more likely to obtain a graduate degree than men. Even so, women are paid less than men at every education level, as shown in Figure A.

Figure A

Among workers who have only a high school diploma, women are paid 21.5% less than men. Among workers who have a college degree, women are paid 23.8% less than men. That gap of $12.07 per hour translates to roughly $25,100 lower annual earnings for a full-time worker. Women with an advanced degree also experience a significant hourly wage gap of $17.70 in 2025, amounting to over $36,800 annually.

What the data makes very clear is that women cannot educate themselves out of the gender wage gap. Systemic inequities are so persistent that women with advanced degrees are paid less per hour, on average, than men with only college degrees. Men with a college degree only are paid $50.61 per hour on average compared with $49.67 for women with an advanced degree.

Black and Hispanic women experience the largest wage gaps

For Black and Hispanic women, the pay gaps relative to white men are even larger due to compounded discrimination and occupational segregation based on both gender and race/ethnicity. In Figure B, we compare middle wages—or the 50th percentile of each group’s wage distribution—for Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI), Black, Hispanic, and white women with that of white men.1

White and AAPI women are paid 81.9% and 93.3%, respectively, of the amount non-Hispanic white men are paid. Black women are paid only 68.3% of white men’s wages at the middle, down from 69.6% in 2024. This is a gap of $9.87 on an hourly basis, which translates to roughly $20,500 lower annual earnings for a full-time worker. For Hispanic women, the gap is even larger: Hispanic women are paid only 64.5% of white men’s wages, an hourly wage gap of $11.06. For a full-time worker, that gap is over $23,000 a year. This disparity has also risen slightly compared with last year.

Figure B

Even when controlling for age, education, marital status, and state of residence, Black and Hispanic women are paid 25.3% and 27.4% less than their white male counterparts, respectively. In other words, very little of the observed difference in pay is explained by differences in education, experience, or regional economic conditions.

Trump administration policies exacerbate lower pay and make it harder to enforce antidiscrimination laws

Over the last year, the Trump administration has repeatedly taken actions that harm women workers, including:

• slashing the federal workforce;
• weaponizing agencies meant to defend workers and combat discrimination by turning them into defenders of discriminatory practices;
• eliminating enforcement of race- and gender-based equal employment practices for federal contractors;
• ordering mass deportations;
• undermining child care providers and vital state funds;
• limiting access to funding for higher education;
• rolling back protections for home care workers; and
• normalizing harassment and retaliation in the workplace.

Black and Hispanic women have endured and will continue to suffer the consequences of these attacks more intensely than many of their white, non-Hispanic male colleagues. Trump’s reckless decimation of the federal workforce, for instance, has disproportionately affected Black women, for whom government jobs have historically been a powerful tool for economic mobility and security. In 2025, Black women’s employment rate fell by 1.4 percentage points to 55.7%. This is one of the sharpest one-year declines in the last 25 years and is a much more dramatic drop than that of other women or Black men. College-educated Black women experienced the largest drop in employment, likely because nearly half of Black federal government workers have a bachelor’s degree or higher. This drop in well-paid, traditionally stable jobs will almost certainly lead to increased economic insecurity. Additionally, mass deportations will likely reduce jobs for both immigrant and U.S.-born women, particularly in the care sector, disproportionately impacting Hispanic women.

The Trump administration has also stifled the government’s ability to protect workers and penalize discriminatory employers. The restriction of the use of words like “gender,” “race,” “equity,” and “discrimination,” and attempts to weaponize the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against women and workers of color will harm all workers, while weakening our ability to track pay equity and enforce nondiscrimination laws. Staffing levels at the EEOC have fallen steadily over the last four decades, but recent funding cuts and shifting priorities will exacerbate its already reduced capacity for enforcement. There have also been ongoing threats to the availability and continued collection of key data throughout federal agencies. If agencies that collect data on wages and incomes by demographic characteristics pull back, it would be a disaster for anyone—policymakers, researchers, employers, or workers—who wants basic facts about how well the economy is performing for different workers and different sectors.

Despite federal threats, states can help close the gender pay gap

Closing pay gaps by gender and by race and ethnicity will require policy solutions on multiple fronts. Although attacks on gender and racial equity continue at the federal level, state lawmakers can and must take steps to address the gender wage gap. Potential solutions include enacting pay transparency laws, mandating Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML), raising the minimum wage, funding universal child care, and removing anti-worker, so-called “right-to-work” (RTW) statutes. Figure C highlights the states that have already passed some of these critical pieces of legislation, while underscoring the need for strong federal standards to cover the millions of workers who live outside of these states.

Figure C

Only 14 states have mandatory, comprehensive PFML policies, even though they provide essential benefits that help workers maintain their livelihoods while taking care of themselves and their families. Studies show that access to PFML improves outcomes for parents and children, workforce participation, and job retention, and that this a beneficial policy for both employees and employers. Access to paid leave is also shown to bridge racial gaps in care and pay.

Pay transparency laws are another useful tool that prevents employers from offering unequal pay by requiring them to include wage information in job postings. While there is some variation in laws, all include some requirement that employers provide salary information in job postings, but employers in Connecticut, Maryland, and Rhode Island only must furnish that information if requested by applicants. This wage transparency has the potential to reduce gender-based discrimination by arming jobseekers with more information and limiting employers’ ability to pay different amounts to similarly qualified candidates. A Colorado pay transparency law, for example, reduced gender wage gaps for workers who changed jobs by as much as 8.9%.

Policymakers effectively stopped protecting workers’ rights to form unions and bargain collectively starting in the 1980s, resulting in less leverage for workers and increased income inequality. Weak labor law allows employers to retaliate against union organizing and undermine workers’ right to collectively bargain. Union contracts can help narrow gender and racial wage gaps by providing clear wages for a given level of experience and education, reducing employers’ ability to discriminate in wage setting. Unfortunately, 26 states have RTW laws that make it even harder for unions to effectively organize and bargain for better contracts. States with these laws not only have lower unionization rates but also have wider gender wage gaps. By making it easier for workers to form unions, policymakers can help reduce these pay gaps.

The minimum wage keeps wages from falling below a mandated floor. While the real value of the federal minimum wage has been allowed to decline, down nearly $5 an hour since its peak in 1968, states have stepped in and increased their minimum wage. As of January 2026, 30 states and D.C. have minimum wages higher than the federal minimum, covering more than half of U.S. workers. Since women are disproportionately found in the low-wage workforce, these laws are key to increasing their economic security and narrowing wage gaps at the lower end of the wage distribution.

Although there is no single policy that will close the wage gap, each of these solutions will narrow it and improve conditions for workers across the country. In his first year back in office, Trump has rolled back critical labor standards, decimated federal unions, and laid off tens of thousands of federal workers. Now, more than ever, it is critical that states step up to protect workers under attack, prevent the gender wage gap from expanding, and build an equitable economy that works for all. 

1. Race/ethnicity categories are mutually exclusive in this analysis. Here we denote white to mean white non-Hispanic, Black is Black non-Hispanic, Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) are AAPI non-Hispanic, and Hispanic refers to Hispanic of any race.

Key takeaways:

• Trump has weaponized the EEOC to go after employers with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, accusing them of “reverse racism” against white workers—but nothing in the EEOC’s own data points to evidence of systemic discrimination against white workers.
• People of color have made up a growing share of the U.S. working-age population since 1989, while the share of the white working-age population has fallen from 76.9% in 1989 to 55.4% in 2025.
• According to data submitted to the EEOC by large employers, workers of color make up more than 40% of the workforce but hold only 1 in 5 executive or senior-level positions—a pattern that contradicts the administration’s narrative of bias against white workers.

Trump’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently opened a federal investigation into Nike and its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives—alleging systemic discrimination against white workers. This is the first time the EEOC has targeted a large private employer with a federal investigation and subpoena explicitly linked to their DEI initiatives and hiring goals. Shortly thereafter, the EEOC sued a Coca-Cola bottling company for sex discrimination following a networking event it held for female employees. The EEOC chair closed a busy February with a letter to Fortune 500 companies, warning them about “unlawful discrimination” related to their use of DEI initiatives.

These recent EEOC actions reflect Trump’s undue control over the agency and his administration’s effective weaponization of the EEOC to fight against DEI, a broad set of programs and initiatives designed to remedy the long and well-documented history of systemic injustices against people of color and women in the labor market. Established by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the EEOC has operated as an independent federal agency throughout its 60-year history enforcing employment nondiscrimination laws—until last year.

EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas has repeatedly affirmed her commitment to redirecting the EEOC’s priorities toward those of the administration; she has made the scrutiny of DEI programs and initiatives a top enforcement priority. This restructuring of EEOC priorities follows the administration’s revisionist version of history that centers white men—not people of color and women—as the primary victims of labor market discrimination. In an unprecedented move last December, Chair Lucas actively solicited discrimination complaints from white male workers, arguing that DEI initiatives function as illegal quotas that make it easier for employers to discriminate against white men. Previous EEOC chairs have avoided using their platform to solicit charges from specific demographic groups. In January 2026, the Republican majority voted to give the chair more power to decide which matters reach the full commission and to require nearly all litigation to be approved by the commissioners. The vote to centralize power with the chair and Republican majority completely neutralizes bipartisan decision-making over which cases to pursue.

Right-wing commentators have cited a now debunked report that over 90% of new corporate hires were people of color as evidence of DEI gone too far. In this post, we expose the fallacy of such claims by showing increased employment among people of color is consistent with demographic changes in the working-age population. The Trump EEOC’s targeting of employers with programs aimed at improving hiring and promotion of historically underrepresented groups defies the ongoing demographic changes of the U.S. labor force and the spirit of the Civil Rights Act that created the agency. Under current law, anyone who believes they’ve experienced discrimination based on race, sex, color, religion, national origin, age, and disability can file a charge. By prioritizing so-called “reverse discrimination,” fewer of the underfunded agency’s resources will be available to investigate systemic inequities against workers of color or members of any other protected class.

DEI programs or not, the U.S. working population is increasingly more diverse and less white

 As Trump’s EEOC goes after private employers based on their efforts to improve workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion, it is important to understand that non-Hispanic white workers are a smaller share of the U.S. workforce than they were decades ago. In 1989, for example, more than 3 out of 4 people between the ages of 16 and 64 were white (see Figure A). This share declined by 28% over the course of the last three decades. In 2025, just over half (55.4%) of the U.S. working-age population was white. People of color, on the other hand, have become an increasing share of the working-age population since 1989.

Figure A

Last year, more than 2 in 5 individuals between the ages of 16 and 64 were either Hispanic, Black, or Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI). This figure nearly doubled between 1989 and 2025. A significant share of this growth can be attributed to the growth of the Hispanic working-age population, which nearly tripled over the course of the last three decades with increased immigration.

Figure B

This demographic shift is most evident among younger workers—the new hires who will gradually replace less diverse cohorts of older workers as they retire. Nearly 1 in 2 individuals between the ages of 16 to 24 are either Black, Hispanic, AAPI, or American Indian and Alaska Native (see Figure B), up more than 80% since 1989. Based on these numbers, it is only logical that historically underrepresented groups of workers account for a larger share of employment now and in the future than they did decades ago—regardless of DEI initiatives. In fact, workplaces that reflect the growing diversity of the labor force are a sign of less discrimination, not of a bias against white workers. Moreover, employers who set and pursue DEI goals that develop the talent and career growth of workers of color are making forward-looking investments in the leadership of the future workforce. This has been a primary motivation and justification for many DEI initiatives.

Despite the growing diversification of the U.S. workforce, EEOC data suggest that people of color continue to be underrepresented in leadership positions

While Trump’s EEOC targets and accuses employers with equity initiatives of bias against white workers, demographic statistics reported to the regulatory agency paint a different picture when it comes to representation in leadership roles. Private employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more employees are required to file an annual EEO-1 report. These data are used to support EEOC enforcement efforts and can raise flags about systemic patterns of discrimination. Based on publicly available EEO-1 data for 2023 (latest year), white workers are significantly more likely to be overrepresented in leadership positions (see Figure C). In 2023, for example, Black, Hispanic, AAPI, and AIAN workers accounted for more than 40% of workers in all job categories at EEO-1 reporting firms, but only about 1 in 5 employees in executive- or senior-level positions. Similarly, less than 1 in 3 workers in mid-level, managerial positions identified as Black, Hispanic, AAPI, or AIAN in 2023.

Figure C

Table 1 presents the 2023 data along with data for 2020—the year several private employers launched DEI initiatives in response to the racial reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police officers—and 2017. While it is impossible to disentangle DEI from demographic and pandemic effects based on these data alone, we can see changes in the racial composition of employees at EEO-1 reporting firms over these years that are generally consistent with changes in the working-age population shown in Figure A. More importantly, nothing in these statistics points to evidence of systemic “DEI-motivated discrimination” against white workers. Relative to the preceding three years, between 2020 and 2023, there was a larger increase in the share of all people of color employed in executive-/senior- level and first-/mid-level management positions—3.7 and 3.3 percentage points, respectively—but white workers remained significantly overrepresented in these roles. Throughout the entire period, Black and Hispanic workers remained grossly underrepresented relative to their share of all positions.

Table 1

The Trump EEOC’s intentional diversion of attention and resources away from more prevalent forms of discrimination will hurt all workers

Aggregate results alone neither qualify nor disqualify a charge of discrimination against a specific employer. All charges, whether filed by an individual or an EEOC commissioner, are individually investigated— a process involving extensive information gathering and detailed examination of the facts to assess the merits of the charge. The administration’s aggressive search for evidence of “reverse discrimination” diverts the limited resources of an already understaffed and underfunded agency away from investigating more prevalent forms of racial and gender discrimination that are consistent with persistent racial and gender wage gaps and patterns of occupational segregation.

It would be a mistake to assume that Trump and the Republican majority leading the EEOC don’t understand the nature of demographic changes in the U.S. population and labor market. The administration’s campaign against DEI initiatives and accusations of bias against white male workers represent an emboldened assertion of white supremacy to stoke fear and to recast growing racial, ethnic, and gender diversity as a threat to social and economic advantages historically afforded to white men. This is a strategy that has often led to periods of slower economic growth and greater economic inequality. In the end, it not only makes the American workplace less fair, but it also risks lowering the standard of living for all working people and their families. 

This interactive chartbook provides a statistical snapshot of race and ethnicity in the United States, depicting racial/ethnic disparities observed through

• Population demographics
• Civic engagement
• Labor market outcomes
• Income, poverty, and wealth
• Health

The chartbook also highlights some notable intersections of gender with race and ethnicity, including educational attainment, labor force participation, life expectancy, and maternal mortality. The findings are bracing, as they show how much more work we need to do to address longstanding and persistent racial inequities.

Most charts include data for five racial/ethnic groups in each of the charts—white, Black, Hispanic, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN). In the charts and text, “Americans” refers to all U.S. residents, regardless of citizenship status.

Researchers seeking disaggregated data and statistics for AAPI and AIAN groups are encouraged to look at sources cited in the companion essays in the Anti-Racist Economic Research and Policy Guide: AAPI Data and the Center for Indian Country Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

As our efforts illustrate, collecting and maintaining data sources that are representative of the entire U.S. population is an essential first step toward overcoming the invisibility, neglect, and lack of understanding experienced by many communities of color. Future work on this project will involve identifying comparable data from alternative sources that fill in as much of the missing information in the chartbook as possible.

In this interactive chartbook, additional notes and source information can be accessed by clicking on the ellipses ( … ) in the notes and sources lines under the charts.

Population demographics

The U.S. has become more racially and ethnically diverse over the last two decades: Share of U.S. population by race and ethnicity, 2000, 2010, and 2020

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Each decennial Census since 2000 has revealed a more racially and ethnically diverse U.S. population. While the share of people who identify as Black (about 12%) or American Indian and Alaskan Native (0.7%) has remained constant, the non-Hispanic white share of the population has declined from 69.1% in 2000 to 57.8% in 2020. On the other hand, a growing share of U.S. residents identify as Hispanic (increasing from 12.5% in 2000 to 18.7% in 2020) or Asian American and Pacific Islander (increasing from 3.7% in 2000 to 6.1% in 2020). These changing population demographics reflect different trends in birth, mortality, and immigration rates across groups. Since 2000, there have also been significant changes in how people identify racially. Notably, a growing share of people identify as being of two or more races (this would include people who, for example, identify as Black and AAPI, but would not include people who identify as Black and Hispanic, as they are identifying Black alone as their race and Hispanic as their ethnicity). Also, a growing but still small share of people identify as being of a race other than those explicitly defined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

As Trevon Logan notes in his essay, it is the OMB that issues regulations regarding the classifications of race and ethnicity by federal agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau, which conducts the major household and business surveys used by researchers. There are six permitted race categories and two ethnicity classifications, Hispanic and non-Hispanic. As such, everyone is a member of both a race and ethnicity. For more on the current classifications, see Logan’s essay.

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While U.S. residents are overwhelmingly citizens, Asian American/Pacific Islander and Hispanic citizens are more likely to be first-generation immigrants: Share of U.S. population by race/ethnicity and nativity, 2024

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Across all racial and ethnic groups, an overwhelming majority of people in the United States are U.S. citizens, according to data from the Current Population Survey. However, nativity shares vary across racial groups. White persons (95.9%), American Indian and Alaskan Native (AIAN) persons (81.3%), and Black persons (88.6%) are most likely to have been born citizens (born in the United States or to United States citizens abroad), compared with over half of the Hispanic population (66.7%) and more than one-third (37.8%) of the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) population.

Immigration status also varies widely. AAPI residents are most likely to be immigrants: more than one-third (38.3%) were not born U.S. citizens but became U.S. citizens (i.e., are naturalized U.S. citizens), while another 23.9% are not citizens. Hispanic residents are next most likely to be immigrants: 12.6% are naturalized citizens and 20.7% are not citizens. These statistics highlight only a fraction of the diversity represented within and across different racial and ethnic groups. As several essays in the Advancing Anti-Racist Economic Research and Policy guide explain, analyses that use categories or group descriptions that are too broadly defined can lead to inaccurate conclusions.

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The uneven geographic distribution of racial and ethnic populations highlights the influence of state and local policy on racial inequality: Share of state population by race and ethnicity, 2020

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The U.S. Census Bureau projects that Black, Hispanic, AAPI, and other people who do not identify as white will collectively account for over half of the population of the United States by 2044. In California, Hawaii, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and the District of Columbia, the white population is already in the minority, and in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, and New York, white persons make up just over half of the population. This interactive map shows areas of population density for each race or ethnic group (click on a race or ethnic group) along with the racial and ethnic distribution of each state’s population (click on a state). It shows that Southern states and the District of Columbia have the largest shares of residents who are Black, with the highest shares in the District of Columbia (40.9%), Mississippi (36.4%), and Louisiana (31.2%). Southwestern and Western states are home to a large percentage of Latinos, with the highest shares in New Mexico (47.7%), Texas (39.3%), and California (39.4%). AAPI residents, including Native Hawaiians, predictably account for nearly half (46.8%) of the population of Hawaii but are also a significant share of the population in California (15.5%) as well as New Jersey and Washington state (10.2% each). Also, as the group’s name would indicate, American Indian and Alaska Native residents account for the highest share of the population in Alaska (14.8%), followed by New Mexico (8.9%), South Dakota (8.4%), and Oklahoma (7.9%). White Americans account for the largest majority of the population in several Northeastern states (90.2% in Maine, 89.1% in Vermont, and 87.2% in New Hampshire) and West Virginia (89.1%).

The patterns illustrated in the map trace each group’s unique history of settlement, immigration, and migration in this country. But they also help to make a point about the important role that state and local policies play in either improving or worsening racial disparities in the United States. As just one example, EPI research shows that Southern states, which have a high density of Black residents, are more likely than states in other regions to use preemption laws to stop local governments from setting strong labor standards, such as raising the minimum wage and guaranteeing paid sick leave.

For more on preemption laws in the South, see Hunter Blair et al., Preempting Progress: State Interference in Local Policymaking Prevents People of Color, Women, and Low-Income Workers from Making Ends Meet in the South, Economic Policy Institute, September 2020.

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Current population demographics by race/ethnicity and age support projections that people of color will become the collective majority by 2050: Share of U.S. population within given age ranges, by race and ethnicity, 2024

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The changing racial and ethnic makeup of the U.S. population is foretold in the age distribution of different racial and ethnic groups. In 2024, over a quarter (28.9%) of people who identified as Hispanic were under the age of 18, as were about a quarter of those who identified as Black (24.5%), American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) (27.9%) and a fifth within those who identified as Asian American and Pacific Islander (19.9%). A smaller share of the white population (17.8%) belonged to this younger age cohort while over a third (36.9%) of white residents were near or at retirement age (age 55 or older)—a much larger share than for other racial and ethnic groups. As the current population ages, the older population will remain predominantly non-Hispanic white while Black, Hispanic, AAPI, and AIAN persons will be a growing share of the younger population. This racial and ethnic generation gap will require balancing the interests of a younger, less wealthy, more racially and ethnically diverse population with those of an older, wealthier, predominantly white population. However, these generations are linked in important ways. Older workers and retirees have a stake in worker, economic, and racial justice for those younger workers who in the years ahead will be a growing share of workers driving the national economy and providing many of the services the aging population relies on. Census population projections from 2022 (the latest available) indicate that in 2050, non-Hispanic white persons will account for less than half (48.4%) of the U.S. population (see U.S. Census Bureau, 2023 National Population Projections Tables, Table 4).

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Men’s educational attainment is highly stratified by race and ethnicity, with American Indian and Alaska Native, Hispanic, and Black men most likely to be “working class”: Share of men aged 25 and older within given level of educational attainment, by race and ethnicity, 2024

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The term working class has been used to describe working-age adults who have less than a bachelor’s degree. Based on their high shares without a bachelor’s degree or more education, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) (85.3%), Hispanic (80.9%), and Black (76.5%) men are more likely to be considered working class (under this definition) than are white (60.3%) or Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) (40.7%) men. Even among the groups of men most likely to be considered working class, there is still a wide range of educational attainment that includes everything from less than a high school diploma to some college. The some college category includes attendance at a four-year or two-year institution, but no degree; it also includes completion of a two-year associate or technical degree. The groups with the highest shares of people with less than a high school education are Hispanic men (27.6%) and AIAN men (23.5%) and 57.7% of Hispanic men and over half of AIAN men (58.2%) have no education beyond high school. While about half (47.0%) of Black men also have no education beyond high school, Black men are more likely than either Hispanic or AIAN men to have a bachelor’s or advanced degree, but still much less likely to have that level of education than either white or AAPI men. AAPI men lead all other racial groups in the share (59.2%) who have a bachelor’s or advanced degree. These patterns of educational attainment are shaped by multiple factors, including differences in immigration policies applied to Asian versus Latin American countries, as well as the legacy of racial discrimination and oppression that severely limited educational opportunities for generations of Black and Native Americans.

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Most women have more than a high school education, but Latinas and AIAN women lag behind other groups in attaining higher education: Share of women aged 25 and older within given level of educational attainment, by race and ethnicity, 2024

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In 2024, across most racial and ethnic groups, at least half of women aged 25 or older had some education beyond a high school diploma. Latinas were the exception—only 49.1% had some level of education beyond high school and 24.2% had less than a high school education, a much higher percentage than any other group of women (1.2 to nearly 5 times as much). Those women least likely to have a bachelor’s or advanced degree were American Indian and Alaskan Native (AIAN) women (19.7%) and Latinas (23.9%). Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) and white women had the highest levels of educational attainment with 56.9% of AAPI women and 41.8% of white women having at least a bachelor’s degree, followed by 29.9% of Black women. As with men, these patterns of educational attainment are shaped by multiple factors, including differences in immigration policies applied to Asian versus Latin American countries, as well as the legacy of racial discrimination and oppression that severely limited educational opportunities for generations of Black and Native Americans. But compared with male educational attainment by race and ethnicity women tend to have higher levels of educational attainment (see Chart 5).

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While the Black and AIAN imprisonment rate has decreased, Black and AIAN people are still five times as likely as white people to be imprisoned: Imprisonment rates per 100,000 U.S. residents by race and ethnicity, 2012–2022

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In response to the demand for criminal justice reform and a shift away from the “tough on crime” politics of the 1980s and 1990s, imprisonment rates for Black, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN), Hispanic people have fallen over the last decade. But Black, AIAN, and Hispanic people are still much more likely to be incarcerated than white people, whose imprisonment rate has stagnated over the past decade. Over 1,000 out of every 100,000 U.S. residents who are Black or American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) were imprisoned in 2023, followed by 603 out of 100,000 Latino U.S. residents, 229 out of 100,000 white U.S. residents, and 88 out of 100,000 Asian American and Pacific Islander U.S. residents. Thus, the approximately 1.8 million people held in U.S. prisons at the end of 2022 —an often-forgotten segment of the U.S. population—are disproportionately Black, AIAN, Hispanic, and other people of color. 

Data on the size of the overall incarcerated population come from the “Correctional Populations in the United States, 2022—Statistical Tables” published by the U.S. Department of Justice in May 2024. 

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Black and AIAN men have an exceptionally high imprisonment rate: Imprisonment rates per 100,000 U.S residents, by race/ethnicity and gender, 2022

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This chart makes two facts very clear: That imprisonment in the United States is not only a gendered issue—with men being much more likely to be imprisoned—but also an issue of racialized gender, with Black and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) men being far and away the most highly imprisoned group. Among women, AIAN residents had the highest imprisonment rate (173 per 100,000), followed by Black residents who had an imprisonment rate (64 per 100,000) in 2022. AIAN women were almost three times as likely to be imprisoned as Black women, around four times as likely to be imprisoned as White and Hispanic women, and 34 times as likely to be imprisoned as AAPI women. Among men, Black residents had the highest imprisonment rate (1,826 per 100,000), followed by AIAN men (1,443 per 100,000). Black men were more than twice as likely to be imprisoned as Hispanic men, more than five times as likely to be imprisoned as white men, and almost 13 times as likely to be imprisoned as AAPI men. AIAN men were almost twice as likely to be imprisoned as Hispanic men, more than four times as likely to be imprisoned as white men, and more than ten times as likely to be imprisoned as AAPI men.

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Civic engagement

Consistently higher turnout among white voters was challenged by historic Black voter turnout in 2012 and, to a lesser extent by historic Hispanic and Asian voter turnout in 2020: Voter turnout in presidential election years by race and ethnicity, select years 1992 to 2024

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The right to vote is the most powerful right of U.S. citizenship—and widespread voter participation is essential to a functional democracy. Yet many U.S. citizens ages 18 and older do not vote. Data on voter participation during presidential election years since 1992 reveal that turnout varies significantly by race and ethnicity and changes over time. Since 1992, voter turnout has typically been highest among white voters—ranging from 60.7% to 70.9%—although Black voter turnout saw a huge increase in 2008 and 2012 during the election and reelection of the nation’s first Black president, Barack Obama. In fact, 2012 was the only election in which Black voter turnout (66.2%) exceeded white voter turnout (64.1%). Hispanic and Asian voter turnout was less than 50% in all presidential election years between 1996 and 2016, until both groups had the largest turnout in decades in 2020 (53.7% and 59.7% respectively). In the 2024 presidential election, voter participation declined among Black, Hispanic and AAPI adults. While one’s personal decision to participate in an election can be influenced by any number of factors—including enthusiasm about a particular candidate or confidence in the democratic process—rampant forms of voter suppression in some states undoubtedly contribute to these disparities as well.

For more on the impact of state laws that limit access to voter registration, revoke the right to vote for returning (formerly incarcerated) citizens, or otherwise make it more difficult for certain populations to cast a ballot, see “State Voting Laws,” Brennan Center for Justice, accessed May 5, 2022;  “State Voting Rights Tracker,” Voting Rights Lab, accessed May 5, 2022.

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Amid dramatic decline in union membership since the 1970s, Black workers have held onto the highest rate of union membership for decades: Union membership rates, by race and ethnicity, 1973–2024

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Like the constitutional right to vote in civil society, union membership gives workers a voice—in this case, a voice at work. But as the chart shows, since 1973, union membership has declined for all racial and ethnic groups. Union membership is an important metric of the state of the American worker given the role that labor unions play in giving workers a stronger, collective voice to advocate for higher pay, better benefits, and training and promotional opportunities, as well as protections against discrimination and harassment. In a unionized workforce, for example, collective bargaining results in labor contracts that help to create greater transparency through clearly defined policies and pay structures. These contracts help reduce the potential for pay discrimination by limiting an employer’s discretion in paying different wages to comparably qualified individuals doing the same job and by providing workers with critical protections and direct recourse against other forms of exploitation or mistreatment. The benefits of union membership are a likely contributor to the higher union membership rate of Black workers, given their long history of unequal treatment relative to other groups of workers. Between 1973 and 1980, Hispanic workers also had higher rates of union membership than white workers. While the subsequent across the board decrease in union membership has brought union membership rates by race and ethnicity closer together, in 2024, Black workers were still more likely to be union members (11.7%) compared with white workers (10.0%), Asian American and Pacific Islander workers (8.9%), and Hispanic workers (8.5%).

Still, the labor movement, like any other U.S. institution, is not immune to racism. Unions must continue to become more diverse, inclusive, and dynamic as they serve the vital role of leveling the playing field for all workers.

For more on the benefits and protections conferred by union membership, see Celine McNicholas et al., Why Unions Are Good for Workers—Especially in a Crisis Like COVID-19, Economic Policy Institute, August 2020 and Valerie Wilson, “The Costs of Racial and Ethnic Labor Market Discrimination and Solutions That Can Contribute to Closing Employment and Wage Gaps,” testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth, January 20, 2022.

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Labor market

Black women have maintained the highest labor force participation rate amid post-1970 rise in women’s labor force participation overall: Labor force participation rate for women by race and ethnicity, 1973–2024

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The labor force participation rate is an important indicator of economic well-being. It shows the number of people in the labor force—people who are employed or unemployed but looking for work—as a share of the number of civilian, noninstitutionalized people ages 16 and older. Across racial and ethnic groups, women’s labor force participation rose significantly from the 1970s through the 1990s for a number a reasons: increased access to higher education, and the introduction and widespread availability of the birth control pill, to name a few. After leveling off during most of the first decade of the 2000s, labor force participation by women declined during or after the Great Recession of 2007–2009. And it declined again during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and recession as the burden of job losses and care responsibilities disproportionately impacted women. In 2024, Black women had the highest labor force participation rate at 60.5%, followed by Hispanic (58.9%), Asian (58.6%), white (56.7%), and American Indian and Alaska Native women (55.1%). While Latinas have historically had the lowest rates of labor force participation among women, their labor force participation rate had been climbing steadily in the four years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. Historically, Black women have had stronger labor force attachments than other groups of women. This is part of the legacy of being forced to work as enslaved people, but the necessity of work has continued for Black women who are often co-breadwinners if not sole earners for their households.

For more on the rise of women’s labor force participation from the 1970s see Elisabeth Jacobs and Kate Bahn “Women’s History Month: U.S. women’s labor force participation”, Washington Center for Equitable Growth, March 22, 2019.  

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Hispanic men have maintained the highest labor force participation rate even as labor force participation of all men has declined since the 1970s: Men’s labor force participation rate by race and ethnicity, 1973–2024

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Across all racial and ethnic groups, men’s labor force participation rates have declined significantly since the 1970s, with the sharpest decline occurring during and since the Great Recession of 2007–2009. While this trend in part reflects an aging population with a growing share of retirees, researchers have suggested that labor force participation has fallen among prime-age men (ages 25–54) due to a rise in serious health conditions that are a barrier to work, the emerging opioid crisis, or technological changes that encourage younger men  (under age 30) to allocate less time to work and more time to leisure activities like playing video games. Unlike with Black women, who have the highest labor force participation rate among women, Black men in 2024 had the lower labor force participation rates than white and Asian men (65.9%). And unlike with Hispanic women, who have historically had the lowest labor force participation rates among women, Hispanic men have had the highest labor force participation rate, which reached 75.5% in 2024. The ranking of men’s labor force participation rates by race and ethnicity has remained constant over the last three decades.

For more on the likely reasons for declining male labor force participation see Alan Krueger, Where Have All the Workers Gone? An Inquiry into the Decline of the U.S. Labor Force Participation Rate, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, September 2017; and Mark Aguiar et al., “Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 23552, June 2017.

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Black and AIAN unemployment is consistently higher than unemployment of all other racial and ethnic groups: Annual unemployment rate by race and ethnicity, 1979–2024

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Relative rates of unemployment by race and ethnicity have been remarkably consistent over time. Typically, the annual unemployment rates of American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN), Black, and Hispanic workers are significantly higher than those of white workers. The difference between Asian and white unemployment rates is smaller, and the size of the gap fluctuates, as does which group has the lower unemployment rate. In 2024, this pattern held, with an unemployment rate of 6.5% for AIAN workers, 6.0% for Black workers, followed by 5.1% for Hispanic workers, 3.6% for white workers, and 3.5% for Asian workers. While 2023 saw historical low rates for Black unemployment, one of the most enduring features of the U.S. labor market is the roughly 2-to-1 ratio of the Black and white unemployment rates.

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Higher education typically lowers a worker’s chances of being unemployed but does not eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in unemployment rates: Unemployment rate by race/ethnicity and educational attainment, 2024

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A breakdown of unemployment rates by race, ethnicity, and education level shows the limits of educational attainment as a factor in addressing inequitable economic outcomes. As the chart shows, racial and ethnic disparities in unemployment rates exist at every level of educational attainment. And Black workers have the highest rates of unemployment among all groups without a college degree. In fact, even at historically low rates of unemployment in 2024, only the most highly educated Black workers approached anything near unemployment rate parity with their white counterparts. The figure also shows that while education can contribute to better outcomes—unemployment rates are lower for all groups at higher levels of education—education alone does not necessarily create equal outcomes. Reading this chart alongside Chart 13 suggests that differences in the average unemployment rates of racial and ethnic groups can only be partially explained by relative differences in education, skill, experience or local labor market conditions—discrimination remains an undeniable factor.

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Black, Hispanic, and AIAN workers earn lower wages and have smaller gender wage disparities than their white and AAPI counterparts: Median wages by race/ethnicity and gender, 2024

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There are sharp differences in the wages earned by typical workers of different racial groups in the United States. Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) and white workers are paid the highest wages at the median, while Black, Hispanic, and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) workers are paid significantly less. The gender differences are also greater among AAPI and white workers than among Black, Hispanic and AIAN workers. While AAPI and white men far out-earn AAPI and white women, Black and Hispanic men and women have much more similar median wages.

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Even after controlling for education and other factors known to affect earnings, women—particularly Black and Hispanic women—are paid far less than white men: Regression-adjusted hourly wage gaps for women relative to non-Hispanic white men, by race and ethnicity, 2024

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Women of all racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. have a significant pay penalty by virtue of their gender, even when we account for several factors that could reasonably influence a worker’s productivity or wage rate, including education, marital status, age (a measure of potential experience) and geographic area (a measure of local labor market conditions). Black and Hispanic women face an additional pay penalty by virtue of their race or ethnicity. The chart depicts these wage gaps, presented as how much less women make than non-Hispanic white men. The fact that Black and Hispanic women earn about a quarter less than white men on average when calculating regression-adjusted wage gaps mean, then, that the pay penalty is not a result of differences in formal education between those groups of women and white men. One partial explanation for these wage disparities is occupational segregation, by which women of color are more highly concentrated in occupations with low pay, even relative to their education level. However, women of all races and ethnicities also often earn less than men in the same occupation (not shown in the chart), an indication of potential pay discrimination.

For more on occupational segregation and on gender pay gaps by occupation, see Jessica Schieder and Elise Gould, Women’s Work” and the Gender Pay Gap: How Discrimination, Societal Norms, and Other Forces Affect Women’s Occupational Choices—and Their Pay, Economic Policy Institute, July 2016; Emily Carew and Valerie Wilson, “Latina Equal Pay Day: Latina Workers Remain Greatly Underpaid, Including in Front-Line Occupations,” Working Economics Blog, Economic Policy Institute, October 20, 2021; Valerie Wilson, “Black Women Face a Persistent Pay Gap, Including in Essential Occupations During the Pandemic,” Working Economics Blog, Economic Policy Institute, August 2, 2021.

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Income, poverty, and wealth

Racial and ethnic disparities in median household income have been largely persistent across time: Inflation-adjusted median household income (2024 dollars), by race and ethnicity, 1972–2024

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In the United States, households of different racial and ethnic backgrounds bring in significantly different amounts of income and have done so for decades. At the median, Black, Hispanic, and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) households earn the least on an annual basis, while Asian and white households earn the most. It is notable, though, that in 2023, Black households had the highest household income on record and experienced the largest increase in income between 2020 and 2023. Significant gaps in employment opportunities (shown in Chart 13) and lower wage levels (shown in Chart 15) translate into lower incomes among Black, Latino, and AIAN households. Household income is also a function of the number of earners in a household. Though not shown here, past EPI research found that in the pre-pandemic economy, about a third of Black nonelderly households (where the head of household is age 18–64) had two or more earners, compared with nearly half of white and Hispanic nonelderly households. This racial disparity in the number of household earners is not just a function of how many working-age adults live in the household, or family structure, but is another measurable consequence of the persistent 2-to-1 ratio between the Black and white unemployment rates (shown in Chart 13). As income inequality in the United States has increased in general over the past 50 years, disparities between the least and most well-off groups have continued to persist and, in some cases, have grown.  

For more on earners per household by race, see Elise Gould and Valerie Wilson, Black Workers Face Two of the Most Lethal Preexisting Conditions for Coronavirus—Racism and Economic Inequality, Economic Policy Institute, June 2020. For more on increasing income inequality, see Elise Gould, “Decades of Rising Economic Inequality in the U.S.,” testimony before the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, Washington, D.C., March 27, 2019.

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Black and AIAN households are more likely to have the lowest annual incomes—under $25,000 per year in 2024: Share of households within given income range by race and ethnicity, 2024

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This chart extends beyond the data on median or midpoint of household income shown in Chart 17 to provide a more detailed look at where different groups fall across the entire household income distribution. In 2024, 22.9% of Black households, 23.3% of American Indian and Alaska Native households, 15.1% of Hispanic households had annual incomes under $25,000, compared with just 11.4% of white households and 9.3% of Asian households. This $25,000 figure is well below the 2024 official poverty threshold for a family of two adults and two children ($31,812). Conversely, 29.3% of Asian households and 17.8% of white households had annual incomes at or above $200,000—the highest income category—compared with only about 6%-10% of Black, AIAN, and Hispanic households.  

Poverty threshold data can be found in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Poverty in the United States: 2024 data tables, published September 09, 2025 

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Persistently elevated AIAN, Black, and Hispanic child poverty rates have thwarted progress reducing overall child poverty in the U.S.: Child poverty rates, by race and ethnicity, 1974–2024

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A cruel and unfortunate reality of structural racism in the U.S. economy is that even in the “best” of economic times, Black, American Indian, and Alaska Native (AIAN), and Hispanic children experience much higher rates of poverty than white children. In 2024, 30.5% of AIAN children, 25.4% of Black children and 20.2% of Hispanic children lived below the official poverty threshold, compared with just 8.2% of non-Hispanic white children 6.4% of Asian children. While child poverty has fallen significantly for Black, Hispanic, and Asian American children over the past 40 years, Black and Hispanic child poverty rates remained over 20% in 2024. Additionally, in 2024, AIAN children had the highest rates of child poverty at over 30 percent (30.5%). This large and persistent disparity in child poverty combined with the fact that Black and Hispanic children have become an increasing share of the underage 18 population over time (see Chart 1 and Chart 4) has resulted in very little change in the overall child poverty rate since 1974. Given the long-term effects of exposure to poverty in childhood, addressing these persistent disparities must play a role in our approach toward building equity and moving the needle on child poverty.

For more on the long-term effects of exposure to poverty in childhood, see Kerris Cooper and Kitty Stewart, “Does Money Affect Children’s Outcomes? An Update,” CASEpapers (203), The London School of Economics and Political Science, July 2017; Randall Akee et al., “Parents’ Incomes and Children’s Outcomes: A Quasi-Experiment,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2010.

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Poverty rates are higher among AIAN, Black and Hispanic working-age adults: Poverty rates for age 18–64, by race and ethnicity, 1974–2024

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While poverty across the working-age population (ages 18 to 64) is lower than that for children (see Chart 19), disparities by race and ethnicity follow a similar trend, with American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN), Black, and Hispanic adults more likely to be impoverished than white and Asian adults. Poverty is a measure of economic deprivation, and among working-age adults in particular, reflects disparities in unemployment, wages, and income. Life circumstances, such as severe disability and major illness—which can also limit earned income or quickly deplete any available savings—also contribute to poverty for this age group. The racially coded misrepresentation of poverty as some kind of moral or cultural pathology has hindered the political will needed to sustain and strengthen vital income supports that have proven effective in fighting poverty.  

For more on the misrepresentation of poverty as a cultural pathology see William “Sandy” Darity Jr., “Revisiting the Debate on Race and Culture: The New (Incorrect) Harvard/Washington Consensus.” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 8, no. 2, 467–476. For more on the vital income supports that would lessen poverty see Asha Banerjee and Ben Zipperer, “Social Insurance Programs Cushioned the Blow of the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020,” Working Economics Blog, Economic Policy Institute, September 14, 2021.

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There are large racial disparities in poverty at older ages (65 and older)—likely reflecting differences in retirement preparedness and/or lifetime income disparities: Poverty rates for people ages 65 and older, by race and ethnicity, 1974–2024

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The poverty seen among older Americans in the chart is most likely the result of a lifetime of low earnings and a lack of retirement preparedness. While research shows that Social Security plays a critical role in keeping poverty rates among older Americans lower than they otherwise would have been (not depicted in the chart), older Black, Hispanic, and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) adults still have relatively high poverty rates. Older Asian Americans are also more likely to live in poverty than older white Americans. Additionally, older Asian Americans have higher poverty rates than younger Asian Americans (see Chart 19 and Chart 20). This is likely due to a larger share of older Asian Americans having worked comparatively few years in the United States, or in jobs where they were unable to accumulate the necessary years for Social Security eligibility, leaving them less able to take advantage of work-based social safety net programs like Social Security.

For more on the causes of poverty among older Americans and the capacity of Social Security to lift older Americans—particularly women and people of color—out of poverty, see Kathleen Romig, Social Security Lifts More People Above the Poverty Line Than Any Other Program, Center on Budget and Policy priorities, April 2022. For more on the economic condition of the older Asian American population, see Victoria Tran, “Asian American Seniors Are Often Left Out of the National Conversation on Poverty,” Urban Wire (Urban Institute blog), May 31, 2017.

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Racial wealth disparities are stark and persistent, reflecting a history of exploitation and exclusion: Median family net worth by race and ethnicity, selected years from 1989 to 2022

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The chart shows sharp racial and ethnic disparities in net worth observed across time in the United States. Though not shown in the chart, these disparities reflect the differences in lived economic experiences between white, Black, Hispanic, and Asian families. Wealth can be accumulated both within and across generations, such that a high net worth can result from the benefit of prime earning years with 1) relatively few employment disruptions, 2) access to wealth-building savings and investment vehicles, 3) relatively few serious negative health shocks, and 4) well-timed wealth transfers from parents and grandparents.  The typical white household has many times the wealth of the typical Black or Hispanic household due to 1) their privileged position in the American labor market, which grants them access to more consistent and higher-quality employment opportunities, 2) their more limited exposure to the health risks brought on by poorer living conditions and discrimination, and 3) their history of access to wealth-building opportunities from which other groups have been excluded. 

In 2022, the Survey of Consumer Finances reported household wealth data for the Asian American population for the first time. Asian household wealth far outstrips that of other households in 2022, though this statistic should be couched with appropriate context: Asian Americans are an incredibly diverse group with varying economic circumstances related to, among other things, immigration history and country of origin; moreover, the SCF oversamples households that are likely to be wealthy. Further disaggregation of wealth data by immigration history could be useful in illuminating wealth disparities within the Asian American population.  

For more on the systemic barriers to Black wealth building see Natasha Hicks, Fenaba Addo, Anne Price, and William Darity Jr., Still Running Up the Down Escalator: How Narratives Shape Our Understanding of Racial Wealth Inequality, The Samuel Dubois Cook Center on Social Equity, 2021. For more on the barriers to Hispanic wealth building see Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Alexandra Perez, and Jamie Buell, “Racial Wealth Snapshot: Latino Americans.” National Community Reinvestment Coalition, September 17, 2021.

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Health

Racial disparities in life expectancy reflect the cumulative disadvantage of living as a minority in the United States: Women’s and men’s life expectancy at birth, by race and ethnicity, 2022

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Racial disparities in life expectancy have been documented as far back as statistics on life expectancy have been recorded in the U.S, with clear and persistent distinctions between privileged groups and disadvantaged groups. That is, rather than groups shifting in their ranking of life expectancy randomly across time, there are distinct patterns in which groups live longer lives than others. In general, Black and AIAN women and men live much shorter lives than white and Asian women and men. 

In 2022, Asian American women and men had the longest life expectancies, at 86.3 years and 82.3 years respectively. AIAN women and men had the lowest life expectancies, at 64.5 years and 71.3 years respectively. This massive gap in life expectancy approaching two decades can be attributed to several factors, many of which are structural and rooted in economic disparity. In recent years, life expectancy gains have disproportionately gone to those in the highest income categories, who are disproportionately white and Asian (see Chart 18). Alongside the history of white supremacy and anti-Black racism in the United States, these economic roots of also help to explain persistent the persistent Black-white gap in life expectancy. That Black-white gap has fluctuated somewhat over the past decade, shrinking due to the impact of opioid-related “deaths of despair” on lowering white life expectancy, and reopening as COVID-19 related mortality disproportionately impacted Black and brown communities. 

Hispanic women and men tend to live longer than white women and men, though that life expectancy advantage has been shown to diminish with subsequent generations of U.S.-born Latinos. This suggests that there may be something uniquely deleterious about living as a minority in the United States.

For more on gaps in life expectancy, effects of the opioid crisis, and Hispanic life expectancy see Congressional Research Service, The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income: Recent Evidence and Implications for the Social Security Retirement Age, CRS Report R44846, July 6, 2021; Helena Hansen and Julie Netherland, “Is the Prescription Opioid Epidemic a White Problem?” American Journal of Public Health 106, no. 12 (December 2016), 2127–2129 (doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2016.303483); Osea Giuntella, “The Hispanic Health Paradox: New Evidence from Longitudinal Data on Second and Third-Generation Birth Outcomes,” SSM – Population Health, vol. 2 (December 2016), 84–89 (doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2016.02.013).

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The Affordable Care Act significantly reduced uninsured rates across racial and ethnic groups, but disparities remain: Uninsured rates by race and ethnicity, 2008–2024

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The Affordable Care Act (the ACA or “Obamacare”) expanded health insurance coverage to middle- and low-income Americans, which disproportionately benefited those groups with the least access—Hispanic Americans and American Indians and Alaska Natives (AIAN), and to a lesser extent Black Americans. Despite the marked improvement in health insurance coverage rates since the implementation of ACA, disparities between groups remain stark, with Hispanic and AIAN uninsured rates double Black rates, and approaching four times as high as the uninsured rates of white and Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI). Early diagnosis and treatment are essential to minimizing the severity of chronic illnesses, and regular health care is important for promoting better overall health. The lack of health insurance often results in a choice to delay receiving health care until one’s condition is critical, contributing to racial disparities in health outcomes and life expectancy.

For more on how the ACA expanded health coverage, particularly to certain groups, see Samantha Artiga, Latoya Hill, Kendal Orgera, and Anthony Damico. “Health Coverage by Race and Ethnicity, 2010–2019,” Kaiser Family Foundation, July 16, 2021; Jesse Cross-Call, Medicaid Expansion Has Helped Narrow Racial Disparities in Health Coverage and Access to Care, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, October 2020.

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Black mothers are far more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than are white and Hispanic mothers: Pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 live births by race and ethnicity, 2023

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Maternal mortality rates are a stark indicator of racial disparities in public health in the United States. Black women are over twice as likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause as white women, almost three times as likely as Hispanic women, and almost four times as likely as Asian women. Although not shown in the chart, these racial disparities persist regardless of a woman’s social or economic status. Health status and differential access to quality prenatal care play a major role in maintaining these disparities, as does structural racism more generally. To adequately address these disparities in maternal health outcomes, we must confront racism and bias in the U.S. health care system and the implications for how health care providers and personnel communicate with and treat patients.

For more on the causes and solutions to Black maternal mortality, see “Working Together to Reduce Black Maternal Mortality,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, April 6, 2022.

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AIAN population 1-year estimates and 3-year rolling averages, select charts

Appendix

Appendix

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Who are low-income families of color?

Families in which the household head identifies as

• Black
• Hispanic
• American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN)
• Asian American or Pacific Islander (AAPI)

With at least one child under the age of 18 living at home

With a total family income below 200% of the federal poverty line (below $64,300 in 2025 for a family of two adults and two children)

Introduction

Low-income families of color live in a permanent cycle of economic insecurity and uncertainty. These families make up a disproportionate share of the nearly 10 million families with children (9.7 million) who are either poor or vulnerable to poverty. As a result of their economic precarity, these families are among the first to experience the painful consequences of a recession. This was evident during the last two business cycle downturns: the Great Recession and the pandemic recession. We find that these two economic contractions dealt a mighty blow to the employment security of these families, triggering a rise in poverty and housing insecurity.

Given the weak policy response to the Great Recession, it took economically vulnerable families of color nearly a decade to recover in nearly all the economic domains we examine, including employment, poverty status, and housing insecurity. While the bold response to the pandemic recession led to a relatively faster rebound in employment, economically vulnerable families of color remain disproportionately burdened by poverty and housing insecurity.

Instead of easing the pain of economically vulnerable families, the Trump-Vance administration and congressional Republicans have been on the attack in the first half of 2025. They have gone after the agencies, laws, and programs that help protect these families from joblessness, discrimination, poverty, hunger, and premature death. In just its first 100 days, the administration deliberately cut the wages of workers, rolled back protections against bias in employment, and hacked away at staffing at agencies that support the well-being of low-income families (like the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services). As if this weren’t enough, the administration and congressional Republicans prioritized dealing a historic blow to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). They cut spending on programs that provide desperately needed health care and nutritional support to families by more than $1 trillion (CBO 2025b).

The chaos and uncertainty ushered in by the economic mismanagement of the Trump-Vance administration even led to the first quarterly contraction in economic growth since 2022. With the prospects of another recession rising, the administration has done everything in its power to leave low-income families even more vulnerable to the pain ahead. As we illustrate in this report, economic downturns hit these families the hardest, and while we’ve learned a great deal since 2007 about how to protect them, the administration has chosen not to build upon those lessons. Instead of protecting the strong labor market they inherited, empowering workers to bargain for better pay and working conditions, and strengthening basic needs programs, the Trump-Vance administration is fighting for an economic agenda centered on austerity for the economically vulnerable and subsidies for the rich.

In just a short period of time, the Trump-Vance administration has left low-income families more economically insecure and vulnerable to pain as recession risks continue to rise

Since taking office, the Trump-Vance administration has worked to dismantle the basic protections that help shelter low-income families from even deeper economic insecurity and hardship. This attack on families has taken the form of executive actions undermining civil and workers’ rights. While some of President Trump’s executive orders have been challenged in court, their introduction has altered the policy discourse and the lived experience of low-income families of color throughout the U.S. with an explicitly racist and xenophobic agenda. Beyond executive actions, the Trump-Vance administration and congressional Republicans also passed one of the most sweeping cuts to the U.S. social safety net in recent history, gutting basic needs programs and making Medicaid and SNAP benefits much more difficult for families in need to access (Shierholz 2025). All of this was done to help offset the cost of tax cuts that disproportionately benefit rich households and corporations (The Budget Lab 2025).

Few policy issues have received as much priority in the Trump-Vance administration as their attack on economic justice and initiatives promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In just his first day in office, President Trump rolled back numerous executive actions expressing the federal government’s commitment to racial justice for Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders (EPI 2025d). President Trump later also rescinded executive actions that identified systemic barriers impeding Black Americans’ opportunity to fully participate in American society on a level playing field (EPI 2025e). Equity in the classroom is also under attack. This was evident when President Trump rescinded an executive order stating that all students should be guaranteed an educational environment free from discrimination, including discrimination in the form of sexual harassment, sexual violence, and on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity (EPI 2025c). These efforts form part of more than a dozen executive actions signed by President Trump in his first 100 days to roll back years of progress on racial and economic justice (McNicholas et al. 2025).

The Trump-Vance administration is also working to roll back anti-discrimination protections by weakening the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) (Maye and Wilson 2025). Just days into his second term, President Trump dismissed two EEOC commissioners and the agency’s general counsel, years before the expiration of their appointment (Olson and Savage 2025; EPI 2025b). As a result of these dismissals, the commission lost the quorum needed to perform key functions. Trump has also redirected the EEOC’s priorities to focus more on investigating so-called DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination and anti-American national origin bias and discrimination (EEOC 2025; DOJ 2025). Because wages are the primary source of income for low-income families, weaker enforcement of anti-discrimination laws leaves families of color more vulnerable to employment and pay discrimination in the labor market.

The EEOC is not the only federal body that the Trump-Vance administration has weakened to the detriment of low-income families. In March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order that would effectively eliminate the U.S. Department of Education (ED). The U.S. Supreme Court later lifted a lower court decision that had blocked the administration from firing more than 1,300 employees at ED (Sherman 2025). While the merits of the case before the Supreme Court have yet to be decided, the gutting of ED will disproportionately harm children from low-income families of color that benefit from federal funding for under-resourced schools and programs aimed at closing learning and achievement gaps (Dianis 2025; EPI 2025a; Santhanam 2025).

More broadly, ED serves an essential role in helping enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance (ED n.d.). Even the U.S. public health infrastructure is now under attack, as the Trump administration is committed to carrying out layoffs at federal health agencies focused on reducing premature and preventable deaths associated with pervasive racial health disparities (Moore 2025).

President Trump’s attacks on federal agencies that are vital to the provision of public goods and services for families are part of a larger war his administration has waged on workers. In his first 100 days, Trump replaced the leadership of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—the federal agency tasked with protecting the most fundamental U.S. labor rights—with members more likely to carry out his agenda to erode workers’ union and collective bargaining rights (McNicholas et al. 2025). This will hurt the ability of workers to form and join unions at work. Unions are vital to working families, as union workers enjoy better wages and working conditions than their nonunion peers (Banerjee et al. 2021).

Beyond executive actions, the main legislative priority of the Trump-Vance administration imposed more than $1 trillion in cuts to basic needs programs in exchange for continuing a tax regime that overwhelmingly favors rich households and corporations (CBO 2025b; Shierholz 2025). Extending the 2017 tax cuts that President Trump enacted in his first term will not just favor the rich disproportionately. On its own, this extension can even suppress economic growth over the long run and leave policymakers with significantly less room to respond to another recession (Bivens 2025b). To help offset the cost of these large tax cuts to the rich, the Republican-led budget reconciliation bill that Trump signed into law adds more stringent work requirements to Medicaid and SNAP on top of historic cuts.

This combination will leave more than 22 million families at risk of losing some or all of their SNAP benefits and strip away health coverage for more than 11 million people (CBO 2025a; Wheaton et al. 2025). These cruel and misguided efforts will disproportionately hurt low-income families of color and children who are more likely than their peers to rely on Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for health insurance, and SNAP and other nutritional assistance programs to avoid going hungry in the face of growing food insecurity (Cid-Martinez, Moore, and Maye 2025; Cid-Martinez 2025).

In its totality, the policy positions President Trump has advanced in his first 100 days via executive orders and legislative priorities will leave low-income families of color and children much more vulnerable to hardship. In the face of a recession, which is no longer a hypothetical scenario, the consequences would be devastating. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported the first quarterly contraction of economic growth since 2022, and while growth climbed again in the second quarter, the U.S. economy is now growing significantly slower in the first half of 2025 than in the previous year (BEA 2025). And the chaotic economic climate that the current administration has generated with its trade, immigration, and macroeconomic policy management has increased the prospects of a recession (Bivens 2025a).

The fear of an approaching recession increased with the downward revision of employment gains that defined the weak jobs report published in August 2025 (EPI Staff 2025). What we see in the first half of 2025 is an economy being held back by anemic growth and a deteriorating labor market.

The upheaval that this administration has produced leaves low-income families of color exposed to future hardship. Without a bold policy response to recessions and the support of a strong welfare state, these families are hit hardest by economic downturns and sluggish economic recoveries (Bivens et al. 2025). This report sheds light on this reality by examining how the last two recessions impacted the well-being of low-income families, as captured by their employment situation, poverty status, and housing insecurity.

Low-income families of color with children and the last two recessions

What do we mean by low-income families of color with children?

The sample of families included in this analysis are those in which the household head has at least one child of their own, under age 18, living at home. Within these households, there may also be other members who have children under 18. Families of color are broadly defined as those whose household head identifies as Black, Hispanic, American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN), or Asian American or Pacific Islander (AAPI).[1]

We further restrict this sample to a subset of economically vulnerable, or low-income, families, defined as having total family income below 200% of the federal poverty threshold.[2] To place the poverty threshold in context, the federal poverty line (FPL) for a single individual in the 48 contiguous states (excluding Alaska and Hawaii), and Washington, D.C., is $15,560 in 2025. While the FPL increases by $5,500 for each additional family member, a year-round worker earning the federal minimum wage ($7.25 an hour) can’t afford to keep their family out of poverty in 2025 (Hickey and Cid-Martinez 2025). For the remainder of this report, we will use families (of color) to refer to families (of color) with children, and the terms “economically vulnerable” and “low income” will be used interchangeably.

Drawing a demographic portrait of economically vulnerable families

While our main economic analysis is focused exclusively on Black and Hispanic families due to data limitations associated with the sample size of other groups, this section provides a demographic picture of low-income families of color more broadly. Table 1 shows low-income families by race and ethnicity, using data from the 2023 American Community Survey (ACS). As depicted in Table 1, families of color are generally overrepresented among the 9.7 million families with children that are economically vulnerable. While Black, Hispanic, AIAN, and AAPI families collectively account for 44.4% of all families with children, they represent 61.1% of economically vulnerable families with children. Although white families make up a larger share of low-income families than any other single racial or ethnic group, they are underrepresented among low-income families (38.9%) relative to their share of all families (55.6%).

More than 3 in 10 (32.6%) low-income families are Hispanic and more than 1 in 5 (21.5%) are Black. Together, Black and Hispanic families represent more than half (54.1%) of all low-income families with children, but just over one-third (35.1%) of all families with children. While less than 1.5% of all families are AIAN, they too are slightly overrepresented (1.8%) among the economically vulnerable. AAPI families account for 7.9% of all families and 5.2% of economically vulnerable families; however, the aggregate socioeconomic status of AAPI families hides important differences that become evident when we separate groups by country of origin (Cid-Martinez and Marvin 2023).

Immigrant families also make up a disproportionate share of low-income families and are especially prevalent among low-income Hispanic and AAPI families. Foreign-born families made up 23.6% of all families in 2023, but a higher share (30.5%) of low-income families were immigrant families. Slightly more than 8 in 10 (81.1%) economically vulnerable AAPI families are foreign-born, as are more than 6 in 10 (61.9%) comparable Hispanic families.

Beyond economic insecurity, these families face ongoing threats under Trump’s draconian mass deportation agenda, which the administration and congressional Republicans bolstered with new financing in the budget reconciliation bill that Trump signed into law (Costa 2025; NIJC 2025). These attacks on immigrant families and the immigrant workforce will also have ripple effects on the labor market, costing the U.S. economy nearly 6 million jobs, particularly in construction and child care (Zipperer 2025). All of this will also put upward pressure on food and housing prices (McNicholas et al. 2025).

In terms of family structure, low-income families are generally more likely to be headed by women or a non-married household head.[3] However, one finds noticeable variations in these patterns across racial and ethnic groups. For example, Black and AIAN families are most likely to be headed by women, 78.7% and 69.5% respectively, compared with less than half (43.3%) of low-income AAPI families. There are also differences in marital status. Low-income AAPI families are significantly more likely to be led by a married couple (76.2%), compared with about half of white (50.5%) and Hispanic (51.6%) families. More than one-third of low-income AIAN families and one-quarter of low-income Black families are led by married couples. Apart from Black families, less than 1% of low-income families report having a partner or spouse of the same sex in 2023. Because most low-income Black families are headed by women, attacks on women’s reproductive rights, along with efforts to undermine nondiscrimination enforcement for racial and ethnic minorities, women, and LGBTQ+ individuals, impose additional disadvantages for these families.

Economically vulnerable families are also more likely to have more than one child (under age 18): 67% of low-income families have two or more children, compared with 58.7% of all families. However, among low-income families, there is little variation in the number of children across racial and ethnic groups. For example, about two-thirds of all low-income families has two or more children, and only 12.6% have four or more children.

The share of low-income families with either a disabled child or parent of a child shows considerable variation across race and ethnicity. AIAN families stand out as having the highest prevalence of disability. About 1 in 3 (33.7%) AIAN households has a parent or child with a disability. Similarly, more than one-quarter of white families, and more than 1 in 5 Black and Hispanic households have a parent or child with a disability. AAPI households had the smallest share (16.2%) of households with a disabled parent or child.

The share of low-income families that is a part of intergenerational households varies significantly by race and ethnicity group. More than 1 in 8 (13.1%) AAPI households are multigenerational or intergenerational, followed by 7.8% of Hispanic households and 5.9% of AIAN households. Economically vulnerable white families are the least likely to be intergenerational, as less than 4% have a grandparent in the household.

Table 1

The Great Recession and the pandemic recession: Differences and similarities

As this report contrasts the economic experience of families during two different recessions, it is important to first understand the severity and duration of these events.

By official accounts, the Great Recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, representing the longest economic downturn to impact the U.S. economy in the postwar period (NBER 2010). We assess the severity of the Great Recession by examining the impact that it had on the labor market via the employment situation of workers of color (EPI 2025g). These workers are among the first to lose a job during a downturn of the business cycle. Between 2007 and 2010, for example, the unemployment rate for Hispanic workers more than doubled, rising from 5.6% to 12.5%. Similarly, the unemployment rate for Black workers shot up from 8.3% in 2007 to 15.9% in 2010. While the recession had been declared officially over by 2009, it took nearly a decade for the unemployment rate of workers of color to fully recover. This prolonged suffering was largely due to the anemic policy response that followed the Great Recession, largely characterized by austerity measures at both the federal and state levels (Bivens 2019; Bivens 2011). 

Compared with the Great Recession, the pandemic recession was considerably shorter. Officially, the pandemic recession only lasted two months, from February 2020 to April 2020, making it the shortest economic contraction in U.S. history (NBER 2021). But this doesn’t mean that the impact on workers was less severe. Just between February 2020 and April 2020, the unemployment rate for Hispanic workers more than tripled, and that of Black workers more than doubled.

Unlike previous contractions, the economic impact on women was particularly pronounced (Alon et al. 2021).[4] By April 2020, more than 1 in 5 (20.3%) Latina workers were out of a job and seeking employment, as the unemployment rate of these workers quadrupled between February and April of that year.[5] Similarly, the unemployment rate of Black women more than tripled during this period, rising from 5% in February 2020 to 16.4% in April 2020.[6] The nature of the economic shock explains much of the disproportionate impact on these workers, as the public health crisis and mitigation efforts fell most heavily on low-wage industries and occupations in which women of color are overrepresented due in large part to occupational segregation (Wilson 2020).

Despite the sharp rise in joblessness caused by the pandemic recession, the economic suffering didn’t last as long as during the Great Recession. Within two years, the unemployment rate for Black and Hispanic workers had fully recovered to 6.2% and 4.3% respectively, reaching historical lows (EPI 2025g). Black women and Latinas experienced similar rebounds; by 2022, the unemployment rate for Black women and Latinas (at 6.2% and 4.4% respectively) was among their lowest in recorded history (EPI 2025g). This swift and atypically even rebound was not just a function of a much shorter recession. As we detail later in this report, the swift and bold policy response to the pandemic and the economic contraction that followed was qualitatively different from that of previous recessions in the United States. Rather than the austerity and conditional support provided during the Great Recession, policymakers responded to the pandemic crisis with more generous cash transfers and extended support for unemployed workers and families with children.

Weathering crises: How did the last two recessions impact the employment security, poverty status, and housing insecurity of economically vulnerable families?

In this section, we examine how the Great Recession and the pandemic recession impacted the well-being of low-income families in three domains: their employment security, poverty status, and housing insecurity.

Employment security: Labor market attachment of families and employment rate of parents

One way of assessing the impact that business cycle downturns have on the economic well-being of families is by examining the impact that these events have on their employment security and attachment to the labor market. Since earnings represent the primary source of income for most families, involuntary separation from the labor market is likely to magnify the economic hardship experienced by these households. In this section, we examine changes in the labor market attachment of economically vulnerable families by looking at the share of families with at least one full-time earner and by capturing shifts in the employment rate of parents between the ages of 25 and 54.

Labor market attachment

Given the importance of work for low-income families, the prevalence of full-time employment in the household provides a measure of their attachment to the labor market. On average, more than two-thirds of low-income families had at least one full-time earner before the Great Recession. However, as can be seen in Figure A, differences in attachment existed by race and ethnicity even before the crisis. In 2007, 63.6% of Black families had at least one full-time earner, compared with more than 67.7% of white families and 77.7% of Hispanic families.

The Great Recession, and the weak policy response that followed, left a major dent in the labor market attachment of families. By 2010, the attachment gap between white and Black families had widened, as only 56% of Black families had at least one full-time earner that year, compared with 63.1% of their white counterparts. The share of low-income Hispanic households with at least one full-time earner also fell by nearly 10 percentage points, from 77.7% in 2007 to 68.1% in 2010. Comparatively, the rate of attachment for white families dropped by less than five percentage points during this period. While Hispanic families were more likely to report a stronger attachment to the labor market than their white peers, this advantage declined during the crisis and its aftermath. Overall, Black and Hispanic families took nearly a decade to recover, as their attachment to the labor market remained below the pre-crisis level in 2016. 

Leading to the COVID-19 pandemic and the recession, families of color regained a significant measure of the employment they had lost during the Great Recession. By 2018, for example, 64.4% and 76.6% of Black and Hispanic families respectively had at least one full-time earner. Largely due to the much shorter duration of the contraction and the robust policy response that followed, the pandemic recession had a much more muted impact on the labor market attachment of these families. Between 2018 and 2020, the share of economically vulnerable families of color with at least one full-time earner in the household declined only marginally, by about three percentage points for Black and Hispanic families.

By 2022, the share of Black families with a full-time earner had rebounded to 68.1%. This figure was nearly identical to the attachment rate for white families in the same year, and it represented the highest rate for Black families since 2007. While that number declined in 2023, it was still higher than in most years since 2007. On the other hand, by 2023, Hispanic families continued to lag considerably behind their 2007 peak.

Figure A

Employment rate of prime-age low-income parents

Examining changes in the prevalence of full-time earners within the household can provide us with a sense of the impact that crises have on the annual labor market attachment of families. But it does not capture monthly changes in the employment situation of parents over the business cycle. This is particularly important in the context of the pandemic recession since it represents the shortest economic recession in U.S. history. To best capture the impact that this economic contraction had on the employment situation of economically vulnerable parents of color, we examine changes in the employment-to-population (EPOP) ratio of low-income parents between the ages of 25 and 54.

In Figure B, prime-age Hispanic parents enjoyed higher employment rates than their Black and white peers before the pandemic. This pattern is also consistent with those shown in Figure A. Leading to the pandemic in January 2020, 94.7% of low-income Hispanic parents between the ages of 25 and 54 were employed, compared with 89.8% of white parents and 88.6% of Black parents, who face the greatest employment disadvantage historically.

As evidenced in Figure B, the gap in employment between Black and white prime-age parents widened during the pandemic recession. Much of this is explained by the disproportionate impact that the pandemic recession had on parents of color. Between January 2020 and April 2020, the employment rate of prime-age low-income Black and Hispanic parents plummeted by more than 32.7 and 27.0 percentage points respectively. By April 2020, only around half (55.9%) of prime-age Black parents had a job. At this point, prime-age Hispanic parents also saw their employment rate drop to a low of 67.7%. While the employment rate of white parents declined by 17.6 percentage points between January 2020 and April 2020, these parents remained about 29% and 7% more likely to be employed in April 2020 than their Black and Hispanic peers respectively. 

While the employment rate of parents of color declined to historically low levels in 2020, the bold policy response to the pandemic recession led to a quick rebound in the labor market. By the end of 2023, 88.9% of prime-age low-income Black parents and 91.6% of their Hispanic peers had a job. The strong recovery of parents of color also helped narrow the racial gaps in employment seen at the height of the pandemic recession in April 2020.

Figure B

Poverty status: Prevalence of poverty and severe poverty

As low-income families are largely dependent on wage earnings to meet their financial obligations, business cycle fluctuations can significantly affect their economic vulnerability. Without a proportional policy response or adequate social protection systems, these families are the first to fall victim to material hardship during an economic downturn. The Great Recession and the pandemic recession exemplify this, as these crises pushed more low-income families of color into poverty and severe poverty. This is evident when we examine changes in the prevalence, severity, and distribution of poverty over time.

Prevalence of poverty

Leading to the Great Recession, economically vulnerable Black and Hispanic families were more likely than their white peers to fall below the federal poverty line (FPL).[7] In 2007, more than half (53.6%) of low-income Black families were poor, relative to 44.6% and 38.7% of Hispanic and white families respectively (see Figure C). The Great Recession and the inadequate policy response to the downturn pushed a larger share of these families into poverty quickly and for a prolonged period of time. By 2010, more than half (51.2%) of Hispanic families fell below the FPL. The poverty rate for Black families continued to rise the following year, reaching nearly 6 in 10 (58.5%) in 2011. The poverty rates of both Hispanic and Black families did not return to pre-Great Recession levels until 2015, more than half a decade later. While racial gaps first widened and then narrowed throughout the crisis and the slow recovery, poverty rates remained much higher among Black and Hispanic families, relative to their white counterparts. 

By the lead-up to the COVID-19 pandemic and the recession that followed, the poverty rates of families of color were lower than they were in 2007, but a large racial poverty gap remained. While less than half (49.3%) of Black families fell below the FPL in 2018, they remained about 30% more likely to suffer material hardship than their white peers.

Largely because of policy, the material situation of families was not impacted as severely by the pandemic recession as it was during the Great Recession. While Hispanic families experienced a marginal increase in poverty between 2019 and 2022, rising by 3.3 percentage points (relative to the larger increase, of 6.6 percentage points, during the previous downturn), the share of Black families that fell below the FPL during this period declined. By 2022, low-income Black families recorded the lowest poverty rate (44.1%) in the entire period between 2007 and 2023. After economic relief measures expired, poverty rates were relatively stable for Hispanic families but had increased for Black families.

Figure B

Prevalence of severe poverty 

Economic downturns don’t just push economically vulnerable families into poverty. Without the support of a strong social safety net, families can fall deeper into economic deprivation when parents lose their jobs during a recession. The parents struggle to make ends meet and provide their children with the resources they need to flourish and to participate in society without shame. This happened far too often during the Great Recession as an increasing share of low-income families experienced severe poverty, with an income below half (50%) of the federal poverty line. To place this figure in context, the severe poverty threshold for the 48 contagious states and Washington, D.C., amounts to $7,825 annually for a single individual in 2025 (HHS n.d.).

Before being hit by the Great Recession, more than 1 in 4 (26.1%) Black families suffered severe poverty in 2007 (see Figure D). At this stage, Black families were about 61% more likely than their white peers to fall among the poorest of the poor. While Hispanic families fared relatively better in 2007 (with a severe poverty rate close to that of white families), disparities quickly widened. By 2010, more than 1 in 5 (21.6%) Hispanic families fell among the poorest of the poor, and an even larger share (30.3%) of Black families experienced similar material hardship, compared with 18% of their white peers. The anemic policy response to the Great Recession left an elevated share of these families under a prolonged state of economic deprivation until about 2015.

The strong policy response to the pandemic recession prevented a large uptick in the prevalence of poverty, especially for Black families, but severe poverty rates rose significantly for families as the material shortcomings of the most vulnerable worsened. Between 2018 and 2020, the share of Black families that fell among the poorest of the poor increased by 4.7 percentage points, from 22.5% to 27.2%. Hispanic families fared slightly better, as the severe poverty rate for these families rose from 15.6% in 2018 to 18.9% in 2021.

While the exposure of families of color to severe poverty fell in 2022, reaching a historic low of 22% for Black families, severe poverty again rose once economic relief measures ended. By 2023, the share of Black and Hispanic families among the poorest of the poor remained above the pre-recession levels of 2018. In contrast, severe poverty among white families had returned to the pre-recession rate by 2023.

Figure D

Housing insecurity: Prevalence and severity

Business cycle downturns that lead to significant job losses don’t just leave low-income families more vulnerable to poverty. Recessions also leave families much more exposed to housing insecurity, irrespective of whether these families own or rent their homes. As we illustrate below, this is because housing represents a significant expense for resource-constrained families. Low-income families of color are particularly vulnerable to even more pain during downturns as they are also forced to contend with an economy that suffers from an obstinate deficit in affordable housing and one in which the housing and lending markets have historically discriminated against them (Moore and Maye 2024).

In this section, we examine the impact that both the Great Recession and the pandemic recession had on the rent and homeownership rates of families of color. We also look at how the cost burden of housing evolved for both renters and homeowners during and after the crises.

Renters and housing insecurity

Given the high economic barriers to homeownership, Black and Hispanic families are generally more likely to rent, relative to their white peers (see Appendix Table 1). But, as homeownership rates declined during the Great Recession, the share of low-income families who rent has increased. Leading to the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2018, more than 80% of Black families and more than 70% of Hispanic families were renters. In contrast, slightly more than half (55.3%) of white families rented their homes that same year. While the share of renters was lower post-pandemic, racial gaps widened in 2023 with Black and Hispanic families being 61% and 36%, correspondingly, more likely to rent than their white peers.

The pandemic and the short economic downturn that followed exacerbated the already precarious position that low-income renters found themselves in after the Great Recession. By 2017, nearly a decade after the Great Recession, the share of economically vulnerable families that spend 30% or more of their income on rent remained above the pre-recession levels of 2007 (see Figure E). In 2018, for example, more than 8 in 10 Black and Hispanic families that rent were housing poor. The strong pandemic recovery did little to shelter these families from the housing affordability crisis in the U.S. that was amplified by the global health crisis (Moore and Maye 2024). By 2023, racial gaps had widened as the share of Black and Hispanic families that spend over 30% of their income on rent climbed above the peaks reached in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Figure E

The impact of the last two recessions on families fell most heavily on those that spend more than half of their income on rent. While some of these renting families had recovered by the time that the pandemic recession rolled in, the share of Hispanic families experiencing severe housing insecurity remained above pre-recession levels in 2019 (see Figure F). Black families were particularly disadvantaged. Nearly half (48.3%) of low-income Black families spent over half of their income on rent in 2019. The situation quickly worsened for all families, as the strong economic recovery failed to protect these families from the growing affordability crisis in housing. By 2023, a higher share of white, Black, and Hispanic families spent more than half of their income on rent than at any other point since 2007. Low-income Black and Hispanic families remain most disadvantaged, as more than half of these families spend over 50% of their income on rent.

Figure F

Homeowners and housing insecurity

The Great Recession deepened the racial divide in homeownership rates, as families of color were disproportionately touched by the crisis (see Appendix Table 1). The share of low-income Black families that owned their home declined from 21.5% in 2007 to 15.7% in 2016, and from 34.6% to 28.3% during the same period for their Hispanic peers. By 2017, a decade after the start of the crisis, the homeownership rate of families had yet to recover, and racial disparities had widened. At this stage, economically vulnerable white families were 169% and 48% more likely than their Black and Hispanic peers respectively to own their home. 

Despite the steep gaps in homeownership, the pandemic recession didn’t quite lead to a suppression of homeownership rates for families. Partly as a function of younger households transitioning toward ownership, low interest rates, and the generous (albeit temporary) economic relief measures enacted in response to the pandemic recession, the downturn failed to reverse the gains in homeownership that economically vulnerable families of color were already experiencing in 2018 and 2019 (Sanchez-Moyano 2024; Callis 2023).

By 2023, slightly more than one-third (34%) of low-income Hispanic families owned their home, compared with about 3 in 10 (29.7%) in 2018. Black families also experienced gains. During this period, the homeownership rate of low-income Black families increased by 5.3 percentage points, from 16.4% in 2018 to 21.7% in 2023. By 2023, the homeownership of low-income Black and Hispanic families had achieved a near full recovery from both the Great Recession and the pandemic recession. While these achievements in homeownership helped narrow racial disparities, economically vulnerable families of color remained significantly less likely to own their homes in 2023 compared with their white peers.

While owning a home can be an important step toward wealth creation, economically vulnerable homeowners spend a significant share of their income on housing costs associated with mortgage payments, taxes, insurance, and more (U.S. Census Bureau 2004). Leading to the pandemic recession, Black homeowners remained more likely to spend over 30% of their income on housing costs (see Figure G). At this stage in 2019, 65.2% of economically vulnerable Black families who owned their homes were housing poor, compared with fewer than 6 in 10 Hispanic and white families. Despite the economic relief measures that helped economically vulnerable families weather the shock of the pandemic recession, housing insecurity rose for nearly all families. By 2023, a slightly higher share of Black and Hispanic families who owned their homes spent over 30% of their income on housing than in 2019.

Figure G

The impact of the pandemic recession and the increasing cost of housing in the U.S. is even more evident when we examine the situation of low-income families suffering from severe housing insecurity (Moore and Maye 2024). These are homeowning families who spend over half of their income on housing. Despite the short duration of the most recent downturn, the share of economically vulnerable families who face severe housing insecurity climbed by more than four percentage points between 2019 and 2023 (see Figure H). By 2023, Black families remained disproportionately vulnerable to economic pain with a prevalence of severe housing insecurity comparable to the hardship they experienced in the lead-up to the Great Recession. Since 2007, more than 2 in 5 economically vulnerable Black families who own their homes were unable to escape severe housing poverty as a result of having to spend over 50% of their income on housing costs.

Figure H

Lessons learned: Key policy choices that made a difference during the pandemic recession and are still needed to break the cycle of economic vulnerability for families

By nearly every measure of economic well-being examined above, low-income families of color weathered the pandemic recession better than the Great Recession largely because of policy choices. The weak policy response to the Great Recession, centered on austerity at the federal and state levels, contrasted sharply with the bold response to the pandemic recession guided by economic relief measures and public investments. This enabled families to avoid a prolonged separation from the job market and a worsening of their material conditions.

The last two recessions and their distinct recoveries left us with a clear blueprint for action. The economic lessons are not unfamiliar:

• Full employment policies that create tight labor markets also promote economic equity for workers and their families.
• Good jobs are union jobs.
• A strong social safety net helps families avoid unnecessary and scarring economic deprivation.

Breaking the vicious cycle that leaves low-income families more susceptible to hardship during recessions will require a renewed commitment to full employment, stronger worker rights and unions, and a robust welfare state that meets the needs of families and children. While the policies that can accomplish these objectives commonly face political headwinds, actions taken by the Trump administration and Congress will create even worse conditions.

Full employment policies are equity-enhancing policies 

While economists debate the overall rate of unemployment that constitutes full employment, there is less debate about the equity-enhancing effects of a tight or “high-pressure” labor market, one in which willing workers can obtain access to a job and the working hours they prefer (Bivens 2021; Bivens and Zipperer 2018). Sustained periods of low unemployment can effectively boost the earnings of low-wage workers and help narrow persistent racial disparities in a labor market that disproportionately disadvantages the employment situation of workers of color and the economic well-being of their families (Wilson 2023; Bivens 2021). The narrowing of these gaps would not constitute full healing from the legacy and continued expression of structural racism and xenophobia in the U.S. economy, but it would be a step in the right direction. Historical evidence points to increased economic equity via low unemployment and rapid job growth. 

The recent economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic contraction that followed serves as a good example of a policy regime that aimed, in large part, to provide a strong or high-pressure labor market. Unlike the economic recovery from the Great Recession, the rebound from the pandemic recession has been characterized by bold fiscal policies, via much-needed relief and strategic public investments, and more accommodating monetary policy that kept downward pressure on unemployment (Wilson 2023; Bivens 2024; Bivens 2016). The results of this policy regime are unambiguously clear: Workers of color made historic gains over the last five years in both employment and earnings, with Black and Hispanic real wages (adjusted for inflation) growing more than three times faster over the last five years than the four decades prior (Cid-Martinez, Maye, and Marvin 2025).

Instead of providing continuity to the economic regime they inherited, the Trump-Vance administration is pursuing a macroeconomic and trade policy that is sowing economic uncertainty and chaos and has already led to a contraction of economic growth in the first quarter of 2025.

Unions help narrow economic disparities that hurt workers and their families

It is easy to envision growing income disparities that threaten the economic security of working families as endemic features of the U.S. economy. Between 1979 and 2023, for example, the real annual earnings for the top 1% of earners increased by 181.7%, while the earnings for the bottom 90% grew just 43.7% (Gould and Kandra 2024). This economic divide mirrors another increasing gap between economywide productivity and the hourly pay of the typical worker, a gap that is even more pronounced for the typical Black and Hispanic worker (Moore and Banerjee 2021). But none of these trends is inevitable.

Behind these rising inequities one finds a wide range of deliberate policies choices that have weakened labor standards and stripped workers of their ability to bargain collectively for better compensation and working conditions (Mishel and Bivens 2021), including the erosion of union membership since the late 1950s (Bivens et al. 2023b).

Workers of color have been disproportionately touched by the decline of union density in the U.S. economy since they typically receive a larger wage boost from union membership. Compared with the premium of the average worker, the union pay premium is higher for Black and Hispanic workers (Bivens et al. 2023a). Black workers, for example, are more likely than white workers to be unionized (13.1% vs 11.2%), and the wage advantage unionized Black workers receive from being covered by collective bargaining is 12.6% (EPI 2025f; EPI 2025h). This premium is higher than the 11.9% average wage premium for unionized white workers. While Hispanic workers have slightly lower union coverage (9.7%) than white workers, they claim a higher union wage advantage of 16.4%.

Unions can also protect workers from discrimination and improve working conditions. Because private employment in the U.S. is for the most part “at will,” employers can terminate workers for nearly any reason, without providing notice or severance. This power imbalance harms workers of color disproportionately, as they are more likely than their white peers to report unfair dismissals (Bivens et al. 2023a). Unions protect these workers with the provision of “just cause” rights that shelter workers from discriminatory and retaliatory practices and unfair dismissals. Unions also offer workers better employment conditions. This is important for economically vulnerable families who face care needs alongside scarce resources. Unionized workers, for example, are more likely than their nonunion peers to have access to paid sick days and employer-sponsored health and retirement benefits (Shierholz et al. 2024).

Low-income working parents stand to gain the most from union membership. However, few of them belong to a union. Only 8% of prime-age Black parents and 4.9% of Hispanic parents belonged to a union in 2023. Similarly, only 5.3% of economically vulnerable white parents between the ages of 25 and 54 belonged to a union in the same year.

Instead of strengthening the rights of workers to bargain collectively, President Trump has openly embarked on an anti-worker agenda centered on weakening the federal agency tasked with protecting the most basic and fundamental U.S. labor rights, the National Labor Relations Board (McNicholas et al. 2025). These efforts will leave families of color much more vulnerable to discrimination in the labor market and to wage theft and mistreatment at work.

The social safety net expanded in response to the pandemic, which demonstrated that poverty remains a policy choice

The welfare of economically vulnerable families of color and their children is not an insurmountable problem beyond the reach of public policy. This became most evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal government responded to this crisis boldly with an array of economic relief measures, such as economic impact or stimulus payments; with provisional expansions of social programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the unemployment insurance (UI) program; with temporary enhancements of tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC); and with increased federal assistance to state and local governments. Overall, these measures kept millions of people out of poverty in 2021 (Banerjee and Zipperer 2022). The economic impact or stimulus checks alone kept nearly 9 million people out of poverty in 2021, including more than 2 million children (Shrider and Creamer 2023).

The expanded social safety net had a notable impact on alleviating the material hardship experienced by families of color. This is most evident when we look at trends in the prevalence of child poverty. For this, we rely on child poverty rates based on the Census Bureau‘s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which accounts for cash and in-kind transfers as well as geographic differences in housing costs. By this measure, the post-pandemic social policy regime looks particularly effective in its ability to reach children of color and to alleviate the human suffering that accompanies deprivation at a young age. Between 2019 and 2021, for example, child poverty rates fell by more than half across nearly all groups, reaching their lowest levels in recorded history (see Figure I). Before the pandemic, more than 1 in 5 Black and Hispanic children fell below the supplemental poverty line in 2019. By 2021, these rates plummeted by nearly 60%, as the Black and Hispanic child poverty rate dropped to 8.3% and 8.4% respectively. The Asian American and AIAN child poverty rates also declined by more than 40% during this period, reaching historic lows of 5.1% and 7.4% respectively in 2021.

Many of the gains in poverty reduction were driven by the expansion of the Child Tax Credit (Gould 2022). Relative to all income transfers in 2021, the expanded CTC drove an estimated 44% of the reduction in child poverty that year (Parolin 2023). The impact was especially pronounced for children of color (Burns and Fox 2022). For example, this expanded credit lifted an estimated 1.2 million Hispanic children out of poverty in 2021. Similarly, more than 700,000 Black children and over 100,000 Asian children avoided falling below the supplemental poverty line in 2021 because of the expanded CTC. The rest of the social policy levers (aside from Social Security) that drove the bulk of the historic reduction in child poverty had also been provisionally expanded under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), including EITC, SNAP, and UI benefits.

Despite the powerful effect these measures had in extinguishing poverty, nearly all the enhanced social safety net measures under ARPA expired by 2022. This purposeful expiration erased the bulk of the gains in poverty alleviation that families and children of color had achieved economically in 2021 (Cid-Martinez and Zipperer 2023). This is evident when we examine how the end of the expanded welfare state impacted the prevalence of poverty for children of color. Between 2021 and 2023, the poverty rates of Black, Hispanic, Asian, and AIAN children had more than doubled, returning to or exceeding 2019 levels (see Figure I). This increase marked an obliteration of the gains achieved in poverty reduction between 2019 and 2021. In fact, by 2023, the poverty rates of all groups were either higher, or no different, than the pre-pandemic estimates of 2019. 

Instead of expanding the CTC to help more low-income parents meet the basic needs of their children and reduce poverty, the Republican-led budget reconciliation bill that Trump signed into law fails to increase benefits for the 17 million children who receive less than the full value of the credit because their parents earn too little to meet the earnings requirement (Maag 2025). The Republican law is also particularly harmful to children of migrant parents, as it revokes the credit eligibility of children that are U.S. citizens if both spouses in a married couple lack a Social Security number (Tax Policy Center 2025). At least one spouse will now need to have a Social Security number in order for a U.S. citizen child to qualify for the CTC. While the Republican law increases the maximum credit from $2,000 to $2,200 per child, no significant changes in the refundability structure and earnings requirement mean that CTC benefits will remain out of reach for the children of the poorest of the poor, while middle- and high-income families continue to receive most of the benefits (Collyer et al. 2025; Crandall-Hollick, Maag, and Jha 2025).

The Republican budget reconciliation bill that the president signed into law also missed an opportunity to break the cycle of economic vulnerability that poor children face with the “Trump accounts.” These new tax-free investment accounts will provide a single government contribution of $1,000 to every child born in the next four years (Hamilton and Pressley 2025). The current administration is also discussing these accounts as a “back door for privatizing Social Security,” a program that helps narrow racial and income disparities, lifting more than one million children out of poverty in 2023 (Price and Mascaro 2025; Morrissey and Bivens 2025; Shrider 2024).

Unlike the more popular Baby Bonds, which require sustained contributions from the federal government throughout childhood with the goal of narrowing the racial wealth gap, the Trump accounts are built on the mistaken premise that low-income families lack an incentive to save when the real issue is that they lack enough discretionary income to put into a savings account (Markoff, Radcliff, and Hamilton 2025). The employment, income, and wealth disadvantages that low-income families with children face leave them in a perennial struggle to access basic necessities like health care, housing, and child care. These families are often an emergency away from falling into poverty or severe poverty. Helping families escape this generational challenge will require more than a new savings vehicle that will further widen the divide between the rich and poor by providing yet another giveaway to rich families.

Figure I

Conclusion

Low-income families of color were disproportionately impacted by the economic suffering that came in the wake of the last two recessions. Both the Great Recession and the pandemic recession worsened the employment security, poverty status, and housing insecurity of these families. In contrast with the Great Recession, policymakers responded to the pandemic with a show of strength that helped families recover their employment and bounce back from poverty significantly faster. But housing insecurity and poverty continue to leave these families particularly vulnerable when the next recession strikes.

While the prospects of a recession continue to rise due to the chaos and uncertainty generated by the Trump-Vance administration, they are deliberately ignoring the lessons of the past. This administration has failed to protect the strong labor market they inherited, has failed to empower workers to bargain for better pay and working conditions, and has failed to strengthen basic needs programs. Instead, the administration is proudly advancing an economic agenda that forces austerity on low-income families, strips away protection from discrimination for people of color, and offers more tax cuts for those who do not need it—the ultrarich. This economic agenda will push even more families into poverty and prolong the pain that follows a recession.

Appendix

Appendix Table 1

Acknowledgments

Support for this research was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.

Notes

[1] Our classification of race and ethnicity is mutually exclusive, such that white families are non-Hispanic white, and Black families represent all families in which the head identified their race as Black in combination with other races. Hispanic families include those in which the head identified Hispanic origin, irrespective of race. Among the remaining pool, those who identified as American Indian in combination with other races are listed as AIAN, and respondents who identified as Asian or Pacific Islander in combination with other races (such as Asian and white or Pacific Islander and white) are listed as AAPI.

[2] Total family income is the sum of the individual incomes of each family member. Because unmarried partners are nonrelated household members, the unmarried partner’s total income is not incorporated in the primary family’s total family income. In cases where the income statuses of the household head and the unmarried partner are different, we use the income status of the household head.

[3] Similarly to race and ethnicity, the marital status of the family is informed by the status of the household head, such that married captures respondents who identify as married, irrespective of the presence of the spouse. All other responses are classified as not married.

[4] As we point out below, this disproportionately affected low-income families of color,  which are more likely to be headed by women.

[5] The unemployment rate here is captured by the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of Hispanic women, 20 years old and over.

[6] The unemployment rate here is captured by the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of Black women, 20 years old and over.

[7] This federal poverty line is informed by the official poverty measure (OPM) published annually by the Census Bureau since 1967. This measure uses a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition to determine who is in poverty. While the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) is considered to be a more accurate and comprehensive measure because it accounts for government transfers and geographic cost-of-living expenses, including housing, published estimates only go back to 2009 (Shrider 2024). For the purpose of this analysis, we rely on OPM to capture the impact of both the Great Recession and pandemic recession.

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What’s happening?

In January, President Trump issued Executive Order (EO) 14173 that drastically cut OFCCP’s enforcement oversight and ended affirmative action requirements for federal contractors established by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. In a total about-face from six decades of leveraging the purchasing power of the federal government to encourage private-sector employers to adopt more equitable employment practices and establish written affirmative action programs for women and minorities, Trump’s executive order explicitly discourages any efforts to remedy racialized or gendered patterns of discrimination in employment or pay. Instead, it derisively and inaccurately labels such efforts as “DEI-based discrimination”, implying that they result in workers of color and women unfairly displacing more qualified (assumptively white male) candidates.

Recently, the agency proposed regulations to further unwind its own work and authority. One of the proposed rules would formally rescind the regulations implementing President Johnson’s original EO to establish the agency’s existence and authority. Another would risk weakening data collection on whether federal contractors are meeting “utilization goals”—benchmarks for evaluating the representation of people with disabilities in the federal contracting workforce. These actions showcase the Trump administration’s embrace of Project 2025’s anti-worker and anti-equity agenda, which included a policy proposal to eliminate OFCCP.

Trump’s 2026 budget formally requests Congress to defund OFCCP’s operations. If Congress were to agree to zero out OFCCP’s budget—and if the regulatory unwinding of the agency’s primary mandate proceeds without obstacles—there would no longer be any federal agency dedicated to ensuring that federal contractors operate fair, nondiscriminatory workplaces. In other words, taxpayer dollars could essentially subsidize persistent discrimination. Under the Trump administration’s plans, OFCCP’s remaining legal responsibilities to enforce equal employment opportunity for certain veterans and for workers with disabilities would shift over to the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Veterans Employment and Training Service (VETS) or to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC)—agencies with different mandates and areas of expertise than the federal contracting workforce.

In one promising sign, fortunately, the Senate Appropriations Committee recently voted to advance a bipartisan funding proposal that rejected the Trump administration’s request to zero out OFCCP’s budget. It remains to be seen how appropriators in the House or the Trump administration will respond.

Shuttering the OFCCP will hurt Black and women workers the most

As a relatively small DOL division, OFCCP’s work has gone largely unnoticed by the broader public even though it has achieved important results for workers. According to historical data that the Trump administration removed from the OFCCP website, OFCCP conducted reviews at contractor sites employing over 10.3 million workers between 2014 and 2024. OFCCP investigations resulted in 250,900 workers obtaining financial relief totaling $260.8 million during that period—and over 22,600 individuals employed by federal contractors received new job opportunities or salary adjustments.

Table 1 presents historical monetary relief data by class, revealing the groups most likely to be harmed by Trump’s actions. Black workers and women received most of the monetary relief resulting from OFCCP investigations between 2020 and 2024, demonstrating just how targeted the impact of Trump’s executive order will be.

Stripped of its authority and with only minimal staff remaining, OFCCP’s only remaining equal employment compliance oversight is for disabled workers under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 3) and protected veterans under the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA). However, as Table 1 shows, no more than 0.1% of monetary relief resulting from OFCCP investigations over the past five years was awarded based on disability or veteran status.

Table 1

While there are no public data on the demographic composition of workers employed by federal contractors, current labor force demographics illustrate the potential magnitude of those changes. Figure A shows the share of the labor force by race, ethnicity, and gender that is either disabled or a veteran. Among Black workers—the largest share of monetary relief recipients—less than 8% of Black women and 13% of Black men would be eligible for monetary relief based on disability or veteran status alone. Across all racial groups, a smaller share of women than men would remain eligible.

Figure A

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the federal government obligated $755.1 billion through contracts in 2024 to procure products and services ranging from aircraft and software to health care and engineering support. The planned elimination of OFCCP represents the Trump administration’s surrender of this tremendous federal leverage to enforce nondiscrimination compliance among private-sector employers. It is also a major shirking of the federal government’s responsibility to demand accountability from businesses who profit from billions in taxpayer dollars, including tax dollars paid by people they now have a lot less obligation to employ and pay fairly. This would be a clear retreat from the principles of economic, racial, and gender justice which are the basis for equal rights and full participation in our society. The American people deserve better.

While the new order does not explicitly prohibit agencies from providing services in languages other than English, it leaves such decisions to the discretion of agency leadership. This may disrupt efforts by recipients of federal funding—like state and local governments, school districts, and health care providers—to serve individuals with LEP, even though recipients of federal funding are prohibited by law from discriminating based on national origin. It is also likely to result in less coordinated and consistent language access across federal programs.

In the absence of strong federal coordination, state and local policies will become increasingly critical to ensuring that language barriers do not impede access to essential government services and communications. With a limited number of states with laws expanding language access, immigrant workers and their families are the most vulnerable to these changes—especially Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. Without language accessibility, these communities are at greater risk of being denied access to social programs and their labor rights—including protections against wage theft, unsafe working conditions, and discrimination.

AAPI communities are particularly harmed by actions to limit language access

All immigrant populations that struggle with language access are impacted by how this executive order could limit resources. AAPI communities have particularly high rates of LEP, with Asian Americans—the only racial group that is predominantly foreign-born—having the greatest need for language assistance. Over 30% of Asian Americans and 12% of Pacific Islanders exhibit limited English proficiency, meaning that over 6 million AAPI individuals are potentially impacted by language access programs.

Previous EPI analysis indicates that certain AAPI groups have particularly high rates of LEP and low median hourly wages. Within the Asian American community, Bhutanese and Burmese individuals have the highest shares of LEP at 68.6% and 67.9%, respectively, and are also among the lowest wage earners with median hourly wages of $16.59 and $17.68, respectively. Within the Pacific Islander community, Marshallese people have the highest share of LEP at 41.9% and have a median hourly wage of $14.90. While cost of living differences and occupational concentrations also play a role in wage outcomes, it is critical that low-wage workers have access to resources in their preferred language to best understand labor laws, their rights as workers, and rights to social programs.

States and localities must act to safeguard language access

The rescission of federal language access guidelines amid the rapidly changing and uncertain policy landscape makes it imperative for states and localities to develop and implement their own language access plans. Figure A highlights states with AAPI LEP populations greater than 30% and indicates which states have enacted a state-wide language access policy. As of 2024, 13 states and Washington, D.C., have state-wide language access policies. Among these states, California, New York, and New Jersey serve some of the largest AAPI populations.

Meanwhile, more than 75 localities have local language access policies. Texas, which is home to 7.5% of the AAPI population and significant shares of Asian American communities with LEP, does not have a state-wide language access plan but does have city-level programs in Austin and Houston.

Notably, several states are home to smaller shares of the total AAPI population but have high concentrations of communities with greater language access needs. Almost 20% of the Bhutanese population resides in Ohio and more than 20% of the Marshallese population resides in Arkansas—both of which lack state-wide language access plans.

The National Council of Asian Pacific Americans and the Migration Policy Institute have developed recommendations for improving language access that emphasize data collection and reporting mechanisms, monitoring the growth of LEP populations, and creating state offices for language access oversight. State-level data collection and maintenance are particularly pressing as the Trump administration is actively removing and censoring disaggregated data published by federal agencies. For example, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency removed a critical environmental justice mapping tool that combined data on environmental burdens and demographics, including race and languages spoken across the United States. States and localities commonly rely on the American Community Survey data, which is administered by the U.S. Census Bureau, to gather information on LEP communities. While the data have not yet been eliminated, states and localities should take proactive measures in preserving data to ensure that they can provide LEP communities access to critical resources and information.

It is vital that states and localities safeguard language accessibility for workers and their families as the Trump administration undermines and rewrites federal guidelines. Ensuring accessible information and services in multiple languages is not only a matter of compliance—it is a matter of equity and economic justice.

Research has played a key role in the environmental justice movement

The environmental justice movement began in the late 1980s when organizers and residents protested the illegal dumping of toxic waste in Warren County, North Carolina—the state’s most heavily Black-populated area. These demonstrations led the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice to publish a landmark study showing that minority communities were disproportionately targeted for toxic waste sites. Targeting these communities was not incidental—it reflected a deliberate strategy to place hazardous facilities in areas where residents lacked the political power or resources to resist.

As the study garnered national attention, the EPA established the Office of Environmental Justice in 1992. President Clinton followed by issuing Executive Order 12898 that directed federal agencies to develop strategies for addressing the disproportionate health and environmental impacts on low-income communities and communities of color. This executive order became a cornerstone of federal enforcement of environmental justice—until Trump rescinded it on the second day of his presidency.

To support the implementation of Executive Order 12898, the EPA later developed the Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool (EJScreen), but Trump’s EPA removed the tool in early February. First released to the public in 2015, EJScreen offered nationally consistent data on 13 environmental burden indicators, alongside six demographic variables relevant to minority and historically marginalized communities. By combining environmental and demographic data, the tool generated Environmental Justice Indexes for each burden, helping to highlight areas of concern.

EJScreen played a key role in guiding the EPA’s development of policies and programs, while also empowering the public to conduct research and advocate for environmental and health equity. Since the removal of EJScreen from the EPA’s website, various organizations have worked to recreate the tool and host its data elsewhere; however, the tool will not be updated by the EPA, nor will it serve as a guiding tool for the agency.

The economic costs of air pollution

One of the environmental indicators available in EJScreen is potential exposure to fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5. This particle pollution is smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter and originates from both natural and human-made sources, including indoor and outdoor environments. In outdoor air, PM 2.5 is primarily produced through combustion—such as emissions from gas and diesel vehicles, as well as coal and fracked gas-fired power plants. Both short- and long-term exposure to high concentrations of PM 2.5 have been linked to serious cardiovascular and respiratory health risks, including nonfatal heart attacks, asthma in children, and premature death.

Research also demonstrates that communities of color and low-income communities face greater exposure to air pollution. Interlocking systems of discrimination—such as racist housing policies, government disinvestment, and economic exploitation—have shaped the social and spatial dynamics that place communities of color in closer proximity to sources of air pollution. These structural forces continue to drive the disproportionate environmental burdens these communities face. Black and Latine populations, in particular, are exposed to significantly more air pollution than they produce—underscoring the systemic nature of environmental injustice.

Air pollution is also a significant barrier to workers’ health and productivity. Employees in low-wage and manufacturing industries are especially vulnerable, often exposed to harmful air contaminants that can lead to illness and reduced workplace performance. Research shows that the lifetime medical and productivity costs of a single new asthma diagnosis was approximately $49,600 per case across all age groups in 2021. Yet, with only 58% of low-wage workers having access to paid sick leave and Congress considering devastating cuts to Medicaid, support for protecting their health—and the environmental conditions of their workplaces—remains dangerously inadequate.

Working families also bear the cost of how PM 2.5 impacts children’s cognitive function and overall children’s health. The economic and health burdens of air pollution have far-reaching, long-term impacts on workers—especially in communities of color and low-income families—threatening both economic stability and overall well-being.

Mapping injustice with environmental data

Using EJScreen data, we analyzed potential community-level exposure to PM 2.5 relative to the state average, and how relative exposure varies with the racial demographics of communities in similar income classes. EJScreen provides data at the Census tract level—census-defined geographic units within county boundaries that typically range from 1,200 to 8,000 people.

Figure A indicates that for each income class, the share of tracts with greater potential exposure to PM 2.5 (compared with their state’s average) typically rises with the share of people of color (POC) in the area. Tracts with the highest proportions of people of color (at least 60%) stand out most. Among tracts that are 20–40% low income, nearly three-quarters (72.6%) of those with at least 60% people of color have greater potential exposure. In tracts where the share of population is at least 40% low income, nearly two-thirds (65.1%) of tracts with at least 60% people of color exceed their state’s average exposure level. Conversely, tracts with the lowest shares of people of color (less than 15%) consistently show the smallest share of elevated exposure compared with state averages for the same income class. To be clear, tracts cannot be compared across income classes as the basis of comparison for each tract is their respective state’s average within the income class.

Figure A

The removal of EJScreen significantly hinders government entities, organizations, and communities’ ability to assess the persistence of disproportionate health and economic impacts experienced by low-income communities and communities of color. Data erasure adds an additional barrier for communities to advocate for their needs and access critical resources to prevent and mitigate the harms of PM 2.5 and other environmental burdens.

Impacts of environmental data erasure

EJScreen provided accessible data to both the EPA and the public on environmental disparities that persist to this day. Federal recognition of environmental racism and environmental justice helped hold the EPA accountable in planning and implementing its programs. Under the Biden administration, the EPA explicitly made efforts to better implement environmental justice into their regulatory and enforcement work. Additionally, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided major funding for local air monitoring, which is critical for measuring the extent of harm caused by air pollutants. By contrast, Trump issued an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to stop the enforcement of state and local climate and environmental justice policies—marking an escalation in his administration’s attacks on environmental equity. Coupled with efforts to expand coal and fossil fuel production, these actions pose far-reaching consequences for the health and safety of communities already burdened by environmental harm.

Tools like EJScreen enable federal and state agencies to craft clear, data-driven policies that protect the health and safety of vulnerable communities. While the EPA’s EJScreen is no longer accessible, at least 16 states have developed their own environmental justice screening tools, each with varying indicators, data sources, and user interfaces. Although these state-specific tools can be useful for localized analysis, they lack the national consistency that the EPA’s EJScreen provides. Without a federal baseline, states may interpret and apply environmental justice data differently—leading to fragmented efforts and uneven protections.

When federal data are censored or erased, it undermines the ability of researchers and policymakers to document harm and expose persistent disparities that might otherwise remain invisible. The EPA plays a critical role in advancing environmental justice—and restoring its data tools is essential to protecting workers and the communities they live in.

The broad-based nature of the labor market recovery is most evident when examining the employment-to-population (EPOP) ratio of prime-age workers between the ages of 25 and 54. Unlike the unemployment rate, the EPOP ratio is not influenced by changes in labor force participation since it captures the share of workers during a given period that have a job. The prime-age EPOP ratio is also less influenced by college attendance and the aging of the population when compared with the employment rate of all workers. As shown in Figure A, the employment rate of prime-age Black, Hispanic, AAPI, and AIAN workers hit record highs within the past few years. For example, the share of prime-age Black workers with a job reached a historic peak of 77.7% in 2023.

Figure A

The rapid and sustained labor market recovery also helped deliver stronger wage growth for workers of color (see Figure B). Black workers experienced the fastest wage growth of any group between 2019 and 2024. In fact, Black and Hispanic real wages grew more than three times faster over the last five years than the four decades prior, on an annualized basis. Much of this is explained by low-wage workers (who are disproportionately workers of color) experiencing strong wage growth since 2019, as the tight labor market with low unemployment compelled employers to expand their hiring networks and compete for workers by offering higher wages. 

Figure B

These historic gains should be protected and continued through a policy regime centered on low unemployment and pro-worker, pro-equity policies. Instead, all of these things are now under threat. Since taking office, President Trump has signed several executive orders centered on deporting migrants, including taking actions that will make it harder for migrants to legally work and support their families in the United States. He also signed orders ending critical diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs within the federal government, which were dedicated to promoting goals of racial and gender equity within the economy and beyond.

Further, President Trump has stifled the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) by illegally firing Commissioners Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels, who were appointed by President Biden and confirmed by the Senate. As an independent agency, EEOC commissioners are intended to be insulated from presidential interference once nominated and confirmed. These illegal firings have prevented the EEOC from reaching a quorum to hear cases and fulfill its mission to enforce federal laws that prohibit employment discrimination and harassment.

Beyond these executive actions, the Trump administration has engineered an economic climate of chaos by announcing (and seemingly walking back) a temporary freeze of federal assistance and broad-based tariffs against trading partners.

But it’s not just Trump who poses a threat. Republicans in Congress are considering plans to gut the social safety net, including Medicaid, a move that would make economically vulnerable families pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. These efforts are likely to severely limit our capacity to recover quickly from the next economic crisis as well as exacerbate the persistently high levels of poverty that disproportionately burden families and children of color.

These policies don’t just threaten the historic gains for workers of color over the last five years. All workers and their families are now forced to contend with heightened uncertainty and chaos that put their employment and broader economic security at risk. As attacks on public-sector employment continue, and the prospects of a self-inflicted recession rise, it’s likely workers of color will once again be among the first to contend with setbacks, reversing the forward movement of the last five years.