Does raising the minimum wage increase unemployment?

In brief: No. High-quality economic research finds increasing the minimum wage does not significantly impact employment.

In detail: The 90% of high-quality economic studies show that increasing the minimum wage boosts wages for low-wage workers without meaningfully increasing unemployment. These studies use statistical tools and empirical methods to measure what happens to workers before and after a minimum wage increase, controlling for other factors that can impact employment. The consistency of these findings across time, place, and level of increase is powerful evidence that increasing the minimum wage creates a healthier low-wage labor market.

An increase in the minimum wage raises the cost of labor for businesses by definition, but the economy can absorb these changes through channels of adjustment including decreased turnover, modest price increases (see Question 2), lower profits, and the reallocation of workers to more productive firms. Even if a minimum wage increase leads businesses to adjust their staffing levels, what workers are likely to experience are decreases in hours worked or increased time between jobs, not categorical unemployment. Higher hourly earnings can more than offset these reductions, leaving many workers with greater total income even if they are working fewer hours.

Will raising the minimum wage cause inflation?

In brief: No. Increasing the minimum wage does not meaningfully increase prices.

In detail: Economists do find that raising the minimum wage increases prices at affected businesses but only very modestly. For example, one study found that a 10% minimum wage increase was associated with a 0.14 percentage point increase in the Consumer Price Index. A study focused on the restaurant industry found a 10% increase in the minimum wage was associated with a 0.58% menu price increase. Even some of the most ambitious minimum wage policies, such as California’s $20 hourly wage floor for fast-food workers, only increased fast-food prices 2.1% (around 8 cents for a $4 item). 

The economic benefits of the minimum wage far exceed these price increases. For low-wage workers, the wage boost from the higher minimum wage more than compensates for increased prices of the goods and services they buy. These workers are in turn spending more in aggregate because of their additional income, which can boost the overall economy. It is also worth noting that modest price increases on things like restaurant menu items are redistributive. Higher-earning consumers pay higher prices, transferring income to low-wage workers receiving bigger paychecks.

Claims that increasing the minimum wage will dramatically increase prices in the economy are false. Low-wage labor is a small share of total business expenses. In restaurants, for example, total labor costs are around 30% of operating costs—which also include rent, food, utilities, and insurance—and the wage bill of the lowest paid workers is an even smaller amount. This, combined with the fact that minimum wage increases can be offset through reduced profits, lower turnover, and higher productivity, is why price increases are small.

Will businesses just relocate if a state or locality raises its minimum wage?

In brief: The best economic research suggests businesses do not move in response to minimum wage increases.

In detail: One way that economists try to understand the impact of minimum wage increases is to compare economic outcomes across jurisdictional borders where a minimum wage increase took effect on one side but not the other. An analysis of cross-state and county impacts of all local minimum wage differences between 1990 and 2006 found no evidence that employment decreased in the places where the minimum wage went up or that employment increased in the places without a minimum wage increase. More recent research supports these findings, strongly suggesting that businesses are not relocating or moving their workers in response to minimum wage changes.

Businesses commonly affected by minimum wage changes (such as restaurants and retail) want to locate where there are consumers with money to spend. Because raising the minimum wage boosts the spending power of low-income households, it can strengthen the local customer base for these direct-to-consumer businesses even as it raises their labor costs.

Is the minimum wage an effective way to fight poverty?

In brief: Increasing the minimum wage does reduce poverty and should be paired with a strong safety net.

In detail: Minimum wage increases do significantly reduce poverty by boosting household income, especially among low-income households. Research has found that a 10% increase in the minimum wage reduces nonelderly poverty by 2–4%. When EPI applied this research to the 2021 Raise the Wage Act (which would have gradually increased the minimum wage to $15 an hour), an estimated 1.8 to 3.7 million individuals would have been lifted out of poverty, including up to 1.3 million children.

The current weakness of the federal wage floor exposes workers to poverty-level wages. As of 2025, a full-time worker earning the federal minimum wage makes less than the poverty line. A stronger wage floor would generate more savings across critical safety net programs like Medicaid, SNAP, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and the Child Tax Credit (CTC), as fewer workers would need or be eligible for these programs due to their increased wages. The safety net would thus be more targeted toward the households that need assistance the most. Those public savings can and should be reinvested in those programs to make benefits more generous.

Can increasing the minimum wage harm workers by pushing them over a “benefits cliff”? 

In brief: The minimum wage does reduce safety net program eligibility, but the wage gains almost always outweigh the loss of benefits.

In detail: Most income-tested safety net programs are not characterized by “cliffs” but rather gradual phase outs. Nevertheless, when a worker’s income increases because of a minimum wage increase, they can lose eligibility to programs like Medicaid, EITC, CTC, SNAP, and housing assistance. Research on the interaction between the minimum wage and safety net eligibility finds that benefit reduction is significantly outweighed by the increase in income from the minimum wage. Benefit reductions offset around a third of the income increases for low-income families caused by the minimum wage—meaning that on net they still benefit overwhelmingly.

Higher minimum wages also help low-wage workers increase their access to medical coverage. While minimum wage increases can lift workers out of income eligibility for Medicaid, they simultaneously increase the take-up of employer-based health insurance plans by many low-wage workers, since those workers can more easily afford those plans. Many workers who lose Medicaid eligibility also can receive heavily subsidized private health care through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges. Researchers estimate that the $20 fast-food minimum wage in California could push almost 60% of Medi-Cal eligible workers in the industry off Medi-Cal and onto alternative health insurance. The wage benefits of the wage floor increase far outweigh the annual premium contributions workers must pay for ACA marketplace healthcare, even accounting for the Trump administration’s choice to let expanded subsidies for the ACA expire.

The reduction in public benefit usage created by higher minimum wages generates substantial savings for federal and state government. These savings should be reinvested in the safety net by expanding program eligibility or otherwise strengthening programs.

There are some safety net programs, which have cliff-like characteristics, like child care assistance, although states are required to provide a graduated phase-out. In rare cases where changes in program eligibility from a minimum wage increase does reduce a family’s total income, this indicates that the design of these programs’ eligibility criteria needs reform, not that the minimum wage increase should be abandoned.

Should lower cost of living in the South and Midwest mean a lower wage floor in those states?

In brief: Even accounting for differences in the cost of living, the minimum wage is far too low in many states across the South and Midwest.

In detail: Cost of living does vary between states and regions across the country, but the minimum wage is still too low across the South and the Midwest. According to EPI’s Family Budget Calculator, even under conservative assumptions of what constitutes a living wage, there is almost no county in the U.S. where a single adult worker can achieve a modest but adequate standard of living earning less than $15 an hour. In fact, many metro areas in the South and Midwest are much more expensive to live in. The living wage in Austin, Atlanta, and Charlotte exceeds $20 an hour. Affordability is still a pressing issue across these regions, even if on average the cost of living is lower. Notably, voters in Florida, Missouri, and Nebraska passed ballot referenda to raise their state minimum wages to $15.

Low wage floors in Southern and Midwestern states hurt workers by suppressing their pay. Most of the states that use the $7.25 federal minimum wage are in the South and Midwest, meaning the effective wage floor in these states is a poverty-level wage (see Question 5). Compounding the problem, many states in these regions preempt localities from passing their own minimum wage policies, preventing policymakers in these jurisdictions from setting wage floors that meet the needs of workers. The use of preemption to dismantle higher labor standards like the minimum wage in the South and Midwest has a long history of being used to reinforce anti-Black racism and white supremacy in these regions.

Can employers ever pay less than the minimum wage?

In brief: Most U.S. minimum wage laws do exempt some groups of workers (such as farmworkers) or set lower minimum wages that apply in certain circumstances (such as for workers who customarily receive tips). Unfortunately, these exemptions can be deeply harmful to workers; in some cases, they were originally adopted to exclude workers of color from minimum wage protections.

In detail: Federal and state labor standards make several groups of workers either ineligible for minimum wage protections or subject to a separate “subminimum wage.”

The FLSA exempts a variety of occupations and types of workers from minimum wage protections. Agricultural workers are excluded from the federal minimum wage entirely and workers who customarily receive tips may be paid a subminimum wage (sometimes called the “tipped minimum wage”) as low as $2.13 an hour (see Questions 8–11). Both of these exemptions originated as ways to exclude Black workers from New Deal economic policies in order to appease Southern lawmakers. Originally, the FLSA also excluded domestic workers, another group of workers with a high concentration of Black workers, but lawmakers extended coverage to them in 1974.

The FLSA also allows employers who have been granted a certificate from the U.S. Department of Labor to pay less than the minimum wage to employees with disabilities (see Question 14).

Another category of federal exemptions and subminimum wages impact young workers. Youth under 20 can be paid as little as $4.25 per hour for their first 90 calendar days of employment. Full-time students, apprentices, and student-learners can also be subject to subminimum wages. And specific occupations typically held by young workers, like babysitters and seasonal amusement workers, are exempt.

Workers misclassified as independent contractors, such as gig economy workers and other wrongly classified employees are not eligible for FLSA protections, including the minimum wage. Also, despite the fact around half of incarcerated people work full-time, these individuals are also excluded from the minimum wage.

State and local policymakers in many states have made efforts to close many of these gaps in minimum wage coverage, but states that do not go beyond the federal standards maintain these exemptions.

Does raising the tipped subminimum wage hurt the restaurant industry?

In brief: Tipped workers are low-wage workers who need wage increases just as much as any other type of worker. Economic research does not find that boosting the minimum wage for tipped workers hurts the restaurant industry.

In detail: There is no inherent economic reason why tipped workers should be paid a lower minimum wage than other workers. The fact that U.S. law allows this can be traced directly back to racist economic practices following the abolition of slavery. Seven states do not have a separate subminimum wage for tipped workers yet still have strong restaurant and hospitality industries. Economic research on the restaurant industry finds that tipped minimum wage increases boost wages for workers without affecting employment. Similarly, when the District of Columbia increased its tipped minimum wage, the restaurant industry did not suffer in terms of employment growth or number of establishments when compared with the U.S average or nearby counties.

Don’t tipped workers earn enough to earn a living wage?

In brief: Tipped workers, including restaurant servers and bartenders, are overwhelmingly low-wage workers. Many struggle to make ends meet, especially those in states where they can be paid less than the minimum wage.

In detail: Tipped workers are more than twice as likely as non-tipped workers to be in poverty. Poverty rates of tipped workers who live in states that use the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 are substantially higher than poverty rates of tipped workers in states that use the same minimum wage for all workers, regardless of tips.

The subminimum wage for tipped workers exacerbates economic insecurity for many workers. Employers are legally required to ensure that on a weekly basis, tipped workers’ tips cover the gap between the tipped minimum wage and the regular minimum wage for all hours worked that week, on average. If they do not, employers are responsible for making up the difference. In practice, this requirement is exceptionally difficult to enforce, as it is largely left to workers themselves to track their hours and tips, make the relevant calculations, and then confront their employer if something seems amiss. As a result, tipped workers—who are already paid low wages—are particularly vulnerable to wage theft.

Will raising/eliminating the tipped minimum wage lead to fewer tips or force restaurants to end tipping?

In brief: Tipping is deeply embedded in U.S. culture. Even in places with no separate tipped subminimum wage, workers still receive tips and typically have higher overall take-home pay than their peers in places with a separate tipped subminimum wage.

In detail: In the seven states that do not have a tipped subminimum wage, tipped workers continue to receive tips. According to the Toast platform, California (a state where tipped workers receive the full minimum wage) had the lowest tipping rate (i.e., the average percentage tip on a bill) in the country at 17.2%. This is less than 5 percentage points less than Delaware, the highest tipping state (21.8%). By contrast, the effective minimum wage for tipped workers in California ($16.90) is more than seven times greater than in Delaware ($2.23). EPI research finds that tipped workers in states without a lower tipped subminimum wage earn, on average, 17% more per hour in total take-home pay (base wages plus tips) than tipped workers in states that use the federal $2.13 tipped subminimum.

There is nothing wrong with workers receiving tips for their work in service jobs, but formalizing tipping in minimum wage law allows employers to shift responsibility for paying their workers onto customers. This in turn means workers are more vulnerable to harassment, discrimination, and other forms of abuse. Restaurant workers, particularly women, are subject to the highest rates of sexual harassment of any industry. Research has also found that racial discrimination leads to Black workers receiving fewer tips than their white counterparts. Relying on tipping means workers have less ability to avoid or protect themselves from harmful interactions in the workplace.

Does the so-called “no tax on tips” deduction eliminate the need to raise the tipped minimum wage?

In brief: The 2025 budget tax bill did create a temporary tax deduction for tipped income, but for most tipped workers the benefits are modest and pale in comparison to the benefits of increasing the wage floor.

In detail: The 2025 Republican budget bill created a new, temporary federal income tax deduction for tipped income. This policy does little to address the precarity of tipped work and the benefits to most tipped workers pale in comparison to the gains they would receive through a significant minimum wage increase. The tax deduction encourages employers to rely more on tipped jobs and avoid raising base wages, exacerbating the low wages and challenging conditions of most tipped jobs (see Questions 9 and 10). Many tipped workers earn too little to qualify for the benefit, and those that do will likely see modest tax benefits. Whereas the average annual benefit for an eligible tipped worker will be around $1,700 a year for the three remaining years the deduction is in place, a minimum wage increase to $15 per hour would boost earnings by $3,200 a year for a full-time worker, in perpetuity.

Aren’t most minimum wage workers teenagers?

No, the vast majority of workers impacted by the minimum wage are not teenagers. Low-wage work is a widespread problem and not just isolated to younger workers. EPI’s analysis of the 2025 Raise the Wage Act found that only 14% of the workers that would be impacted by the policy were younger than 20 years old.

Will raising the minimum wage hurt young workers in their first jobs? 

In brief: Higher minimum wages cause little to no employment changes for teenagers.

In detail: The majority of studies find little to no evidence that the minimum wage causes employment losses for teen workers. Instead, their incomes increase as they earn higher pay. It is also worth keeping in mind that teen workers are a minority of low-wage workers, and a shrinking share of the workforce overall as the cultural and economic emphasis on education has grown. To that end, minimum wage increases can support young workers’ educational attainment, particularly for low-income teens. Minimum wage increases significantly improve high school graduation rates for low-income students, a vital investment that can have large long-term consequences for those workers’ lifetime earnings.

Do workers benefit from the FLSA’s subminimum wage for workers with disabilities?

In brief: The federal subminimum wage for disabled workers does not provide real wage protections and is out of step with the most effective ways to boost employment for workers with disabilities.

In detail: Under Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers can apply for special certificates with the Department of Labor that allow employers to pay workers with mental or physical disabilities less than federal minimum wage. Employers can only apply for certificates if the worker’s disability actually impairs the worker’s earning or productive capacity. An overwhelming share (96%) of 14(c) employees work in so-called “sheltered workshops” which put workers with developmental disabilities in isolated, noncompetitive environments.

These certificates apply to a small number of workers (less than 37,000 nationally) but also produce exceedingly low pay for workers with disabilities. Nearly half of 14(c) workers were paid less than $3.50 an hour, exacerbating the economic precarity experienced by disabled workers. Disabled adults are 24.1% more likely to live in poverty than other adults. The low pay permissible under 14(c) perpetuates these workers’ struggle to make ends meet. This measure is also unnecessary for providing well-paying employment opportunities to workers with disabilities.

Researchers studying state repeals of 14(c) have found that the change has not hurt disabled workers’ employment. In Maryland, eliminating the provision caused no significant change to disabled worker employment, while in New Hampshire, employment increased. An analysis of the federal AbilityOne program, which is composed of nonprofits that primarily employ workers with disabilities, found that state and local minimum wage increases did not impact the employment of those workers. Employers also do not appear to shift more workers to 14(c) certificates in response to minimum wage increases.

Overall, the use of 14(c) certificates has been declining over time. Across the country, 27 states and D.C. have eliminated or restricted the use of the provisions, reflecting that the policy does not offer real wage protections for disabled workers and that there are superior models of employment for workers with developmental disabilities. Respecting the dignity of workers with disabilities requires prioritizing real pay and inclusion in supportive, but integrated employment opportunities.

Many cities and states already have minimum wages above $15 an hour. Is increasing the federal minimum wage still important?

In brief: Yes, tens of millions of workers still earn less than $15 an hour. In many states and cities, higher wage floors are needed to provide meaningful economic security.

In detail: In the last decade, dozens of cities and states have responded to federal minimum wage inaction by enacting stronger wage floors, in many cases reaching or exceeding $15 an hour. As of 2026, more workers work in a state with at least a $15 minimum wage than in a state using the federal minimum wage. However, there are still 20 states that use the federal $7.25 wage floor and around 14 million workers earn less than $15 an hour.

Even places with recent minimum wage increases might need higher wage floors. The first $15 minimum wage was enacted in 2013. Prices have risen substantially since then, and consequently, the value of targets like $15 an hour has declined significantly. According to EPI’s Family Budget Calculator, $15 is not a living wage almost anywhere in the country. Many cities and states have at least partially protected their wage floors by adopting automatic annual adjustments to account for inflation, but if the initial value is too low, this inflation-indexing only locks in an unlivable floor.

Very few workers earn the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Is the minimum wage even relevant anymore?

In brief: The fact that so few workers earn the federal minimum wage is a policy failure, not a reason to abandon the policy. The minimum wage is a vital tool for lifting wages and addressing systematic power imbalances between workers and employers. The failure to adequately raise the minimum wage over time has left millions of workers being paid less today than they could have been earning.

In detail: It is true that a small fraction of the labor force earns exactly the federal minimum wage, but this is a policy failure that has left tens of millions of workers with lower wages. Had Congress simply raised the federal minimum wage to keep pace with inflation since the late 1960s, it would be over $12.50 today. According to EPI’s Low Wage Workforce Tracker, 14 million workers earn less than $15 an hour, while 42 million earn less than $20 an hour. The minimum wage does not just impact workers at the very bottom of the wage distribution; it exerts upward pressure for low-wage workers in general. Minimum wage increases create “spillover effects,” where workers above the new minimum wage threshold also see wage increases as employers keep wage ladders and seniority consistent in their firms.

It is important to recognize that without leveraging policy tools like the minimum wage, the low-wage labor market gives employers excess power to set low wages. Workers have limited information about the 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. These economic “frictions” add up, providing leverage for employers to pay lower wages than is optimal for the economy. In short, the longstanding failure to increase the federal minimum wage suppresses worker pay, leaving low-wage workers worse off every year there is no increase.

Does raising the minimum wage lead to automation of low-wage jobs?

In brief: The minimum wage is not a primary cause of automation of low-wage work, but automation is changing the tasks and occupations of some low-wage workers.

In detail: Increasing the cost of low-wage labor can encourage businesses to invest in automation. This can lead to disruption for specific low-wage jobs, or changes in the roles in those occupations. Since we see that the minimum wage does not increase unemployment for low-wage workers (Question 1), the effects of automation on these low-wage jobs are either limited or counterbalanced by expanding employment in other occupations. Evidence suggests that while in recent years automation is taking over a growing number of routine tasks from low-wage workers, the minimum wage has a limited contribution in driving that adoption. Researchers with access to extensive data on McDonalds franchises nationwide found that, while the adoption of touch-screen ordering kiosks grew significantly between 2017 and 2019, there was no evidence that uptake was driven by minimum wage increases. So far, the overall employment impact of automation on low-wage workers has been insignificant, as reductions in occupations with high amounts of routine tasks have been replaced with greater demand for jobs with interpersonal tasks.

Technology is a tool, but the balance of labor market power determines who it helps. Automation has been a feature of our economy since the industrial revolution, boosting productivity in our economy. Technological change can disrupt employment for specific sectors or professions, but in aggregate the economy benefits. Workers benefit from these productivity increases when there are strong labor institutions like access to unions, a strong minimum wage, and policies that support full employment. When those institutions are weak, the gains from technological advancement are not shared widely and contribute to increased inequality.

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. 

Throughout this second term we’ve also seen a steady increase in white supremacist rhetoric and images coming from government officials: Agency-run social media accounts make appeals to the homeland, remigration, and other white nationalist dog-whistle phrases, while the president himself continues to demonize nonwhite immigrants and cities with large minority populations, and to mischaracterize the Civil Rights Movement as harmful to white people.

These actions and rhetoric are not simply poor governance; they follow a historical script that white supremacists in the United States have used for centuries to undermine progress toward equity. Each time, that script sets the stage for policy changes that lead to a massive increase in economic inequality. Here’s the pattern:

1. Establish distrust in progressive goals by raising the specter of racial minorities corrupting and taking advantage of a government that has “overstepped its authority.”
2. Severely curtail government functions by dismantling existing programs directed toward progressive policy goals (e.g., equity, poverty prevention) and allowing others to expire, halting forward progress.
3. Institute methods of targeting and controlling nonwhite populations, increasing economic insecurity, stoking fear, and lowering their political and economic power relative to white peers.

Consider what took place in the half-century following the Civil War, as the United States tried and failed to rebuild itself into a multiracial democracy for the first time:

1. Establish distrust: Disaffected ex-Confederates led campaigns of misinformation alleging that newly elected Black government officials were corrupt and undeserving, that the government itself had overreached by sending federal troops to ensure that Southern states followed the law with respect to racial inclusion, and that allowing Black men the vote presented an existential threat to white men, women, and children. In the West, white supremacists spread similar misinformation about Chinese immigrant workers.
2. Halt forward progress: Federal troops were removed from Southern states, exposing Black families to horrific acts of economic, social, and spiritual violence from white vigilantes; institutions like the Freedmen’s Bureau and Freedman’s Bank were dismantled and allowed to collapse, curtailing progress toward integrating Black families into the U.S economy with dignity.
3. Target and control nonwhite populations: White supremacists in government passed legislation limiting the economic, social, and political rights available to nonwhite Americans, most notably Jim Crow laws and the Chinese Exclusion Act. These policies led to significant economic precarity for nonwhite workers, allowing exploitative systems like sharecropping to thrive and ensuring railroad workers and miners had little recourse to protest poor working conditions.

This reassertion of white supremacy saw the government take a big step back from progressive goals and ushered in one of the most unequal and unstable ages of U.S. economic history: The Gilded Age.

For a more recent example, consider the 40-year-long backlash to racial progress made in the mid-20th century through the efforts of the Civil Rights Movement (beginning with the first Reagan administration in 1980):

1. Establish distrust: Disaffected conservatives employed an intellectual strategy (neoliberalism) designed to cast government as the source of America’s economic woes, rather than a tool that could be used to alleviate them. Neoliberalism recast the social safety net that had been designed to keep poor and working-class families, children, and the elderly out of poverty as a hammock in which lazy, undeserving Black people (especially single Black mothers) could comfortably take advantage of taxpayer dollars.
2. Halt forward progress: Citing the myth of an undeserving, perpetually dependent “underclass,” Republican and Democratic administrations alike took action. They made major cuts to programs designed to alleviate economic hardship, halting progress toward closing racial gaps in poverty because Black families are more likely to be impoverished. The federal government added strict work and income requirements to social programs like food stamps (SNAP) and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC, eventually replaced by the much less adequate TANF) that decreased their efficacy. The government stripped institutions devoted to enforcing and advancing civil rights like the EEOC and the Commission on Civil Rights of funds and reduced their scope.
3. Target and control nonwhite populations: Beginning in the 1970s the United States embarked on an unprecedented expansion of policing and the carceral state; the development of this mass incarceration led to an explosion of arrests, convictions, and crucially, imprisonment. Nonwhite men were and still are overwhelmingly the targets of this system, with Black incarceration rates six times higher than those of white people. Incarceration serves as a tool of economic stratification that renders Black and brown workers noncompetitive with white workers and severely limits the capacity of Black and brown families to accumulate wealth, alongside a host of other imposed disadvantages.

The wealthiest owners of capital used white supremacy to shape policy decisions such that they could capture a greater share of economic power and resources, influencing government to withdraw resources previously used to support and protect workers and families of all shades. This also set the stage for weakening labor standards, chipping away at workers’ rights to organize, allowing globalization to displace blue-collar workers, and influencing the Fed’s tolerance of excessive unemployment.

Further, as more of our national spending shifted toward law enforcement rather than social welfare, racial targeting increased, poverty was criminalized, and so too did a greater share of income go to the top percentile earners. Significant progress toward racial economic equity—little that there was—has all but ceased since the 1980s.

Figure A shows the raw deal that both Black and white workers have been given since the 1980s. While the workforce became around 84% more productive between 1979 and 2024, workers’ wages grew much more slowly. Typical white workers’ wages only grew 37% over the same period, while Black workers’ wages grew even more slowly at 28.5%.

Figure A

Figure B shows how racial wage inequality increased along with rising corporate power. The lighter line here represents the extent to which workers’ productivity increased faster than their pay (the ratio of net productivity—or output per hour—to total compensation per hour); in other words, the extent to which employers were able to capture a greater share of economic output than workers. As the wage gap between typical Black and white workers increased (from 16.6% in 1979 to 21.6% in 2024, a growth rate of 30%), so too did the ratio between productivity and pay (from 1.6 in 1979 to 2.27 in 2024, a growth rate of 42%). In this view, white supremacy works as a wedge by which the working class is separated, weakening worker power and allowing the productivity-pay ratio to increase.

It took the labor market shock and reset of a global pandemic, and the rapid, expansionary policy response toward it, to finally break the decades-long trend of increasing Black-white wage inequality; the resulting tight labor market saw faster wage growth between 2019–2024 for low-wage workers (who are disproportionately Black and brown) than for any period since 1979, and a drop in the Black-white wage gap from its peak in 2018 at 26.4% to 21.6% in 2024. This relatively rapid reduction in Black-white income inequality provides important context for our current wave of white supremacist backlash.

Figure B

White supremacy has always been employed in the United States as a political economic strategy for maintaining social hierarchy. That hierarchy is consistent both with the assertion of white privilege and with corporate interests. The value in maintaining white supremacy for the interests of wealthy elites is that it complicates class solidarity across racial lines, while also pre-establishing a population of workers who exist along a spectrum of exploitation.

The most exploitable of these workers (e.g. Black, brown, women, and/or poor workers) have little to no recourse for protection nor serious prospects of changing their class position without explicit outside intervention, even across generations. Workers with more proximity to power (e.g. white, male, and/or high-income workers) have access to real social and material benefits that come from their relative position, and so are incentivized to maintain the status quo. Even still, these workers face exploitation and economic precarity as the truly wealthy continue to build capital, and their share of the nation’s income and wealth continues to rise.

The Trump administration’s motivations are clear when viewed through the lens of white supremacist political economy. This framing puts Project 2025 into its proper historical context as a recycled agenda designed to reassert the social and economic privileges of white Americans relative to their Black and brown neighbors, pacifying potential white opposition toward policies that will most enrich the few at their absolute expense. If this historical script is allowed to run its course—that is, if the administration is successful at establishing distrust in the efficacy of government, halting what forward progress we’ve made toward equity and progressive goals, and targeting and controlling nonwhite populations—the final act will be another massive increase in economic inequality and instability, a period in which most American families will suffer.

There is a path forward, however. Progress toward racial equity has always threatened consolidated class power, particularly in the United States. A working-class coalition across racial lines has historically been a dangerous prospect for those invested in maintaining inequality because it creates the possibility of a serious inversion of power, a realization that solidarity could genuinely result in a more equitable distribution of the costs and benefits of production. Building a genuine multiracial democracy in which people from all groups can expect to be treated with dignity and have access to the same economic security and opportunity is a real path toward breaking down inequality run rampant.

Here’s the bottom line. When we see:

• A concerted effort to discredit and defund the important work done by Black and brown women government employees to move us toward equity (Establish distrust)
• The tearing down of historic laws and institutions devoted to providing equal access to opportunity and security to all Americans (Halt forward progress)
• The terrorizing of nonwhite workers and their families in places of work and worship alike (Target and control nonwhite populations)

We must recognize these efforts as intentional ones that lead us all—white workers and their families included—down a path to greater economic inequality, instability, and injustice.

While acknowledging that these legislative achievements led to “some very wonderful things,” President Trump recently mischaracterized this historic period as one in which white people “were very badly treated” amid “reverse discrimination.” The president’s unfounded remarks explain why this administration has directly attacked more than half a century of progress toward racial and economic justice. 

Here are six ways the Trump-Vance administration worked to undermine Dr. King’s legacy and curtail economic justice for people of color in 2025:

1. Making it easier for employers to discriminate by undermining the effectiveness of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for historically marginalized workers, and by gutting the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). 
2. Hindering equal access to education by dismantling the Department of Education and pushing policies that could limit diversity in higher education, a critical pathway to economic mobility.
3. Effectively eliminating the Minority Business Development Agency, the only economic development agency created to help minority-owned businesses overcome social, economic, and legal discrimination.
4. Cutting spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) amid persistently high rates of poverty for children of color and rising food insecurity.
5. Slashing funding for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), programs that disproportionately help families and children of color access health care.
6. Undermining health equity through massive cuts to the country’s public health infrastructure, setting the stage for the next health crisis.

The emboldened assertion of white supremacy in our political economy demands a renewed commitment to Dr. King’s legacy of racial and economic justice. In a 1966 essay, Dr. King described economic justice and security as rightful aims in the transition from equality to opportunity. Contrary to Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of pervasive discrimination against white people, both equality and opportunity continue to elude people of color at far greater rates as evidenced by disparate and suboptimal outcomes in employment, earnings, wealth, and even health. Moreover, none of those indicators suggest that white people have been disadvantaged by civil rights enforcement. The immortal words of Coretta Scott King capture the true spirit and impact of the civil rights era and expose Trump’s error and hypocrisy: “Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.”

Throughout 2025, the Trump administration has discriminated against Black and brown federal employees—and taken actions that make it easier for all employers to follow suit—by weaponizing the enforcement of antidiscrimination laws against the people they were justifiably created to protect. This includes redirecting EEOC priorities toward so-called “DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination and anti-American national origin bias,” restricting use of disparate impact liability, and effectively ending enforcement of equal employment laws for the civilian federal contracting workforce by gutting the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. The administration’s actions clearly demonstrate how risky it is for workers not to have the protections of a legally binding union contract.

A key element of any union contract is protection from unfair and arbitrary dismissals. For school employees, as for so many, the greatest risk is an employer who plays favorites. Whenever an employer has the unfettered right to decide who stays and who goes, workers suffer. In K–12 education, the risk of layoff is a persistent issue because school districts face endemic funding challenges and are frequently forced to reduce staffing levels. Because educator unions don’t want to give principals and superintendents the right to pick and choose who gets laid off based on their own whims, they have traditionally fought for seniority protections, often known as “last in, first out,” or LIFO. Under LIFO contract provisions, seniority is the sole determining factor in layoff decisions, with newer teachers laid off before more senior ones.

However, LIFO has a tremendous drawback: It hinders efforts to recruit and retain Black and brown teachers. In Minneapolis, for example, only 20% of Minneapolis teachers are people of color, even though fully two-thirds of the student body is Black or brown. Similar patterns are observed nationally. Almost half (49.5%) of K–12 students in the U.S. are Black, Hispanic, or Asian American and Pacific Islander, compared with only 24.4% of teachers. As studies have long documented, LIFO contributes to this disparity because even if a school district is able to hire more Black and brown teachers, they will be the first let go as more senior white teachers are retained.

At the same time, however, teachers’ unions are right to fight for layoff provisions that take away the arbitrary power of school districts to pick and choose who they keep. A core function of unions has always been to protect workers across occupations from being subject to the whims of supervisors. Indeed, Black and Hispanic workers report higher levels of unfair dismissals, suggesting that racial inequities would persist or even get worse in the absence of union protections. Union protections are also critical to narrowing pay disparities. According to a 2024 Rand report, Black teachers received lower average salaries and pay raises than white teachers. This difference was further linked to the fact that Black teachers were less likely to live in states with collective bargaining. The inadequacy of pay is one of the main reasons teachers report for leaving the profession, further contributing to the demographic mismatch between teachers and students.

This is the conundrum that MFE sought to address when the union went on strike in 2022: preserving protections against unfair dismissal while mitigating the inequities of LIFO. The solution they reached in 2022, a solution approved by 76% of MFE’s majority-white membership, was elegant and fair. The contract does not guarantee that Black or brown teachers will be protected from layoffs, contrary to the claims of right-wing groups that the contract is “woke” and “racially discriminatory.” Rather, the contract states that, when the district is forced to lay off teachers, it will protect teachers from populations that are “underrepresented among licensed teachers in the district.”

This means the contract’s protections can and will shift over time, as the composition of the teaching workforce changes. If and when Black teachers are no longer underrepresented in the district, they will no longer be afforded special protections against layoffs. Indeed, if someday it is white teachers who are underrepresented, the same contract provisions would apply to them. Far from embedding racial discrimination into the contract, these provisions support the development of a diverse teaching workforce while protecting worker rights.

The goal of a diverse teaching workforce is not just a noble one but also supports the success and well-being of students of color. Research indicates that the presence of teachers who reflect the diversity of the student body is linked to lower rates of suspension, lower dropout rates, greater college aspirations, and improved test scores. The contract MFE fought for will support the careers of Black and brown teachers and will lead to a teaching staff that looks more like its students, while continuing to protect all educators from arbitrary dismissal. The Department of Justice’s claims are a complete distortion of reality. Sadly, that is what we have come to expect from this administration, which seems dead set on rolling back decades of civil rights protections and abdicating the 60-year position of the federal government in setting a higher standard for employing a workforce that represents the diversity of the U.S. population. Hopefully, the courts will recognize this and allow Minneapolis Public Schools to continue its innovative program to protect a diverse workforce.

This report is a joint project of the Economic Policy Institute and The Century Foundation.

Introduction

The first six months of the second Trump administration have been characterized by a haphazard yet comprehensive evisceration of basic government institutions. From the mass firing of federal workers to the effective shuttering of entire agencies, Trump and his billionaire allies have pillaged public-serving institutions while giving themselves cover by claiming to promote “efficiency” (Gangitano 2025; Shao and Wu 2025; Rubin 2025).

Some of the most critical targets of these attacks have been independent agencies. Unlike executive agencies, which are overseen by the White House and accountable to the president through a cabinet secretary that is part of the president’s administration, independent agencies are established by Congress to serve a specific public purpose. While housed within the executive branch, they are not subject to day-to-day control by the White House. These agencies are supposed to perform essential watchdog functions—protecting individuals like workers, consumers, and retirees from being abused by better-resourced and more powerful corporate actors. The United States Government Manual lists over 55 such permanent independent agencies in the federal government, including well-known entities like the Federal Reserve Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as lesser-known agencies like the Merit Systems Protection Board (Federal Register 2025).

These agencies have been among the earliest targets of Trump’s governmental dismantling. First, he has taken the historically unprecedented (and clearly unlawful) step of firing dozens of board members and commissioners before the expiration of their terms in office—not for any allegations of misconduct, but solely due to political disagreement or assertions of presidential prerogative (EPI 2025a; EPI 2025b; Peck 2025; EPI 2025c; Goldstein and Steel 2025). He has also issued multiple executive orders asserting new levers of control over independent agencies—giving the White House unprecedented control over these agencies’ regulations, enforcement decisions, and day-to-day operations (The White House 2025a, 2025b). More recently, President Trump has gone as far as publicly attacking and then firing Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, a move that could have long-lasting economic implications (Rugaber and Weisser 2025). The Federal Reserve is perhaps the most well-known independent agency among the public; its mandates include promoting full employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates, among others.

Many of these changes have largely flown under the public radar screen, but the implications for the U.S. public are significant. While many government agencies have enforcement authority that can serve as a check on corporate power, independent agencies are unique in their ability to hold powerful actors accountable, regardless of political influence. The structure of independent agencies also promotes stability and prioritizes expert decision-making on topics of critical national importance. From the Federal Reserve’s decisions about interest rates to the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s evaluation of car seat safety, the work of independent agencies impacts working families’ lives every day. The public deserves to know that these agencies are working as Congress intended: to serve the people of the United States. The Trump administration’s actions are threatening the effectiveness of these agencies and putting people’s lives and well-being at risk.

This report will explore the structures and protections that characterize independent agencies and the multifaceted attacks that these agencies have experienced in recent months. We will then examine several case studies of key independent agencies that protect workers and consumers: the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the National Credit Union Administration. We will explore why and how Congress designed them to be independent, the important role their independence has played in protecting the U.S. public, and how their functions will be compromised if brought under the direct control of the Trump White House.

As these case studies will show, the devastation of independent agencies by the Trump administration creates tremendous potential for abuses of power that could let wealthy corporations pad their profits at the expense of ordinary people’s lives and livelihoods. The systematic attack on independent agencies deserves more attention and opposition from Congress, both to defend its prerogative to create public watchdogs within the executive branch and to protect the people these important agencies were designed to serve.

The characteristics of independent agencies

The history of independent agencies dates back to the 1880s when Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroad rates.  Businesses were so reliant on the railroads that Congress decided it was important to minimize the potential for disruption by insulating the regulatory system from the vagaries of the political process (Inskeep 2025).  Many additional independent agencies were created by Congress during the New Deal.  It is commonly thought that these New Deal agencies were created to be independent because Congress wanted their decisionmaking to benefit from specialized expertise and—for several of these agencies—because they were tasked with performing adjudicative functions and, thus, were structured more like courts to preserve the integrity of the deliberative process and promote collaborative and consensus-based decisionmaking (Corrigan and Revesz 2017, 639).

Unlike executive departments—which are run by a single cabinet secretary who is a part of the president’s administration, tasked with advancing the president’s agenda in how they execute their statutory functions, and can be removed by the president at will—the design of independent agencies reflects a judgment made by Congress that they could not perform their essential functions properly if they were subject to presidential pressure. For example, early legislative proposals to house the Federal Communications Commission within the Department of Commerce were rejected out of fear that concentrating power over such important means of communication (at that time, the radio system) in the hands of a politically accountable cabinet secretary would create too much potential for political manipulation (Stella 2025).

While no two independent agencies look exactly alike, the common thread among these agencies is some level of independence from direct presidential control. Congress uses a variety of tools to insulate independent agencies from White House influence. Most importantly, these agencies generally have some ability to make policy decisions in service of the agency’s mission independent of substantive influence from the president.

Independent regulatory authority

One of the most important protections that most independent agencies have from White House influence is their historical ability to use their regulatory authority independently. For decades, traditional executive branch agencies have been required to submit all regulatory actions to the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Analysis (OIRA) for substantive review and input (including interagency review by other executive agencies) and cannot move forward with regulatory actions without OIRA approval. There is abundant evidence that this process causes excessive delays and can hamstring the regulatory effectiveness of executive departments by reducing transparency and opening the door for political manipulation (Copeland 2013; Goodwin 2020). But, until recent executive orders by President Trump, independent agencies have been largely exempt from this review (Dudley 2025; OMB 2025). This exemption has helped to limit the influence of political actors—who are not experts in the substance of the agency’s work—on the regulatory process and has allowed independent agencies to act more nimbly to protect the public from imminent threats.

Independent enforcement and litigating authority

Since the 1960s, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has had centralized authority to engage in litigation on behalf of the United States government.1 Thus, while some traditional executive agencies continue to have a significant degree of freedom to pursue enforcement actions under the statutes they administer (DOL n.d.), many do not necessarily have final say about which cases they bring in court or which arguments they make, as such decisions are ultimately controlled by DOJ. However, Congress has given most independent agencies some level of independent litigating authority (though the extent of such control varies from agency to agency).2 This authority is essential to the watchdog functions of these agencies. It allows them to control their own enforcement agenda because they can independently initiate and litigate enforcement actions in court. It also ensures that agency leaders’ expertise about laws they administer is respected, because they control which legal arguments the agency makes. Finally, this authority preserves agencies’ ability to protect the public by promoting consistent and evenhanded interpretation of the law and ensuring that the meaning of the law is being dictated by experts, not politics.

Removal protections

To ensure that these agencies can truly exercise their regulatory and enforcement powers independent of White House influence, Congress has made a judgment that independent agency leadership should be protected from removal by the president in the absence of misconduct.3 Removal protections are a key component of agency independence because they ensure that agency leaders cannot be fired based on policy disagreements with the president or the leadership of other executive agencies. These protections also play a valuable role in ensuring that agency enforcement of the law is not influenced by partisanship or political favoritism. It is essential that watchdog agencies have the ability to evenhandedly enforce the law against anyone who threatens the public’s interests, regardless of whether the subject of the agency’s enforcement is a presidential friend or donor.

Multimember structure

Most (but not all) independent agencies are designed to be governed by a multimember group of commissioners or board members. These boards are designed with staggered terms that are usually longer than a single presidential administration.4 Congress has explicitly required that some agencies have bipartisan balance, while other agencies have developed to be bipartisan as a matter of practice even if not required by law (Datla and Revesz 2013).5 Some agency leaders are required by Congress to have particular backgrounds or expertise as well.6 These requirements are intended to foster expertise and continuity and to limit the influence of partisanship in agency operations. Longer terms allow agency leaders to gain expertise, while limiting the influence of any particular president over agency leadership (as typically a board will not entirely turn over during a single presidential administration). Staggered terms also provide stability in agency operations and enforcement of the law, facilitating institutional memory and preventing dramatic shifts when there are changes in the presidential administration. Bipartisanship and background requirements promote expert decision-making and ensure that agency decisions benefit from a variety of perspectives.

Independent control over congressional testimony, legislative proposals, and budget submissions

Finally, independent agencies benefit from being able to speak with their own voice. For example, in communicating with Congress, traditional executive agencies must coordinate with the White House and get approval of testimony and other formal communications. By contrast—while the details vary from agency to agency—many independent agencies communicate directly with Congress in providing information and responding to congressional oversight. Independent agencies often submit their own legislative proposals and comment on proposed legislation when requested by Congress without coordinating with the White House or other executive branch agencies.7 In addition, while independent agencies’ budget requests are included as part of the president’s budget request to Congress, many independent agencies control the content of those submissions, including descriptions of agency priorities and how funds will be allocated.8 These unfiltered channels of communication facilitate a relationship of trust between independent agencies and Congress, allowing Congress to objectively and carefully monitor whether these agencies are effectively performing their critical watchdog functions. Finally, while many federal agencies are tasked with conducting independent research and producing independent data, independent agencies have the ability to control their own research agendas and produce reliable findings and data that are trusted by outside parties and insulated from political influence.

The Trump administration’s broad attacks on agency independence

In the first few months of his administration, President Trump has taken dramatic steps to exert control over agencies that were intentionally designed by Congress to be insulated from the immediate control of the White House. Most notably, he has fired numerous independent agency heads and board/commission members without cause and has issued several executive orders seeking to fundamentally upend the relationship between independent agencies and the White House.

Firing independent agency leaders

As explained above, most independent agency leaders (at least those on multimember boards and commissions) are protected from removal unless they commit misconduct. Since the start of his administration, President Trump has fired numerous independent agency leaders, either citing no reason at all or explicitly citing policy disagreement, rather than misconduct, as the rationale for the dismissal (Cantor and Sobran 2025).9 Many of these communications emphasized the administration’s view that statutory “for-cause” removal restrictions do not preclude President Trump from firing independent agency commissioners because such protections are an unconstitutional restriction on the president’s executive authority under Article II of the Constitution.10

These firings are blatantly unlawful. In Humphrey’s Executor v. United States 90 years ago, the Supreme Court established that it is consistent with the Constitution for Congress to establish independent agencies and commissions whose leaders can only be removed by the president for cause.11 Humphrey’s Executor rejected the president’s claim of authority—despite statutory removal protections—to terminate without cause a member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The Court distinguished a prior decision affirming the president’s authority to terminate a postmaster from office by looking to Congress’s purpose in creating the FTC and the functions commissioners perform. The Court explained that the FTC was “created by Congress to carry into effect legislative policies embodied in the statute in accordance with the legislative standard therein prescribed, and to perform other specified duties as a legislative or as a judicial aid,” in contrast to the postmaster, whose duties were restricted to “performance of executive functions” and who was “charged with no duty at all related to either the legislative or judicial power.” The Court concluded that in light of these duties, the FTC “cannot in any proper sense be characterized as an arm or an eye of the executive” because “its duties are performed without executive leave, and, in the contemplation of the statute, must be free from executive control.” The same constitutional principles have been applied to uphold removal protections at other agencies performing “quasi-legislative” or “quasi-judicial” functions, not executive functions—insulating them from removal does not intrude on the president’s constitutional authority to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” because they are largely not performing purely executive functions.12

Several fired members of independent agencies and commissions have now filed lawsuits challenging their removals as inconsistent with both their agencies’ authorizing statutes and the Supreme Court’s decision in Humphrey’s Executor (Newhouse 2025). The administration’s response to these lawsuits has made clear that President Trump’s goal is for the Supreme Court to revisit Humphrey’s Executor and ultimately rule that the president has unconstrained authority to fire all agency leaders in the executive branch, including those at independent agencies.13

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has strongly signaled that these removal protections may be deemed unconstitutional in the future, at least for agencies that exercise any level of “executive” authority.14 While it is unclear how broadly the Court’s ruling will sweep, eliminating these removal protections would jeopardize all facets of agency independence, as agency leaders would be reluctant to engage in regulatory or enforcement actions—or even day-to-day agency decision-making—without coordinating with the White House for fear of termination.

Implementing new levers of control over day-to-day agency operations

At the same time their leadership was being removed from office, these agencies were also targeted by a wave of new executive orders that undermine their independence in dramatic and unprecedented ways. The first such order, issued on February 18, was entitled “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies” (The White House 2025a). The order purports to “improve the administration of the executive branch” and “increase regulatory officials’ accountability to the American people” by asserting unprecedented new presidential powers to control the day-to-day operations of independent agencies. These new powers would include:

• giving the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) the authority to control expenditure of the agency’s funds, including defunding “particular activities, functions, projects or objects”;
• requiring all “agency heads” (including, it would seem, each individual member of bipartisan boards, whether Republican or Democrat) to employ a “White House Liaison” as a senior staffer in their offices;
• requiring independent agency chairpersons to “regularly consult with and coordinate policies and priorities with the directors of OMB, the White House Domestic Policy Council and the White House National Economic Council”; and
• giving the director of the OMB the authority to establish and evaluate the “performance standards and management objectives” for independent agency heads.

This level of White House micromanagement undermines the basic structure and function of independent agencies. Congress designed these watchdog agencies to be independent so that they could make decisions—whether about how to prioritize agency objectives, how to most effectively enforce the law, or how to best allocate resources—free from political influence. Independent agencies are often tasked with making decisions that will serve the long-term public interest but may be politically unpopular in the short term. The Federal Reserve provides the most obvious example: It is charged with setting interest rates at a level that will balance the need for maximum employment with the need for stable prices. It is widely acknowledged that allowing an elected official like the president direct control over the Federal Reserve would result in excessive pressure for interest rate reductions that would provide the president with a short-term economic boost, but that would cause long-term inflationary pressure that is detrimental to the economy (Wessel 2025).

Independent agencies are also charged with evenhandedly enforcing the law without favoritism. Giving the White House the ability to pick and choose which prosecutions to fund or which agency objectives to prioritize is fundamentally incompatible with those goals, rendering independent agencies virtually indistinguishable from nonindependent ones, contrary to the clear intentions of Congress.

Usurping independent agency rulemaking authority

President Trump has also used executive orders to undermine independent agencies’ use of their rulemaking powers. These new orders seek to impose a variety of unprecedented constraints on agencies’ ability to use their independent regulatory authority:

• Independent agencies are instructed to review all regulations in their jurisdiction and seek to repeal those deemed inconsistent with “Administration policy.” This substantive review and repeal process must be conducted “in coordination with their DOGE Team Leads and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget” (The White House 2025b).
• Independent agencies must now “consult with their DOGE Team Leads and the Administrator of OIRA” before considering any potential new regulations.15
• Independent agencies are now required to submit all new regulatory actions to OMB for substantive review before publication (The White House 2025a);
• Independent agencies must seek to immediately repeal any regulation that could be deemed in tension with newer Supreme Court precedents.16

While policies differ from agency to agency, most independent agencies have historically had independent authority to consider and promulgate new regulations or repeal existing regulations based on their expert judgment, not directives from the White House (or mysterious White House-adjacent entities like DOGE). And they have controlled their own decisions about how to best comply with the Administrative Procedure Act to ensure that their regulatory efforts can survive judicial review. Such independent control of the regulatory process is a critical tool to ensure that watchdog agencies can prioritize protecting the public and serving their statutory missions over politics. In the few months since President Trump issued these orders, the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, has already published a proposed rule to repeal greenhouse gas emissions standards for fossil fuel-powered power plants, citing multiple executive orders by President Trump as the reason for its review of the standard.

Attacks on the independence of agency enforcement

The February 19 order also directly impacts independent agency enforcement of the law, including by:

• giving the president and the U.S. attorney general the ability to override the agency’s own interpretation of the law(s) it administers; and
• directing agency heads to consult with the director of the Office of Management and Budget and then “direct the termination of all . . . enforcement proceedings that do not comply with the Constitution, laws, or Administration policy (emphasis added).”

At most independent agencies, any requirement to coordinate enforcement actions with OMB or to terminate enforcement actions deemed inconsistent with “Administration policy” represents a tectonic shift in enforcement practices. Even traditional executive agencies often retain significant discretion about how they enforce the law and have the authority to initiate and direct their own enforcement actions (DOL 2025). Independent agencies, of course, have traditionally had far greater autonomous control of their enforcement activity. Indeed, these agencies are structured with insulation from political forces precisely so that they can fairly and evenhandedly enforce the law.

Giving the White House control over the enforcement process could effectively nullify important laws protecting the public if the president chooses to override or undermine enforcement efforts. Such interference would be deeply problematic even at traditional executive departments—it is even more untenable at agencies specifically designed by Congress to be insulated from political influence. The potential for political favoritism to influence the enforcement process allows these agencies to be used as tools for corruption and abuse of power, rather than forces for public good.

Case studies

In recent weeks, significant attention has rightly been given to the egregious firing of Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and the implications it will have on our economy in both the short and long term. The following case studies highlight four other independent bodies, illustrating the potential consequences for working families when the autonomy of these agencies are compromised. Each of these agencies plays an essential watchdog role in protecting the public from being abused or cheated by more powerful corporate actors. It is clear that greater presidential interference in their operations could undermine their ability to serve the public.

The National Labor Relations Board

Congress established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in 1935 following decades of strife between management and labor. In the years prior to the Board’s creation, violent labor disputes were common and workers seeking to join unions and improve working conditions faced brutal repression by corporations, private militias, and police (Andrias 2024). Presidents deployed troops to crack down on labor protests and courts frequently stepped in to suppress labor activity (Taft and Ross 1969).17

In response to this crisis of labor unrest, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA). The NLRA empowered workers, giving them a legal right to form and join unions and to bargain collectively for better wages and working conditions. It also protected workers from retaliation for joining together and speaking up about unfair treatment. In service of these goals, the Act established the NLRB to serve as a neutral adjudicator of labor disputes.

While housed within the executive branch, the Board was created to be “an independent quasi-judicial body” that would adjudicate labor disputes as a court.18 The NLRB was designed with many of the classic characteristics of independent agencies. For example, board members are protected from removal by the president except for cause,19 and serve staggered terms of five years—longer than a single presidential administration.20

The Board hears cases involving both allegations that an employer or union has committed an unfair labor practice (such as threatening a worker for discussing working conditions with colleagues or refusing to bargain with the workers’ union) and cases involving objections that arise during a union election. In hearing these cases, the NLRB acts very much like any other court. Board members are charged with adjudicating each case on its merits free from influence by personal interests21 or the political process.22 The Board’s decision-making procedure must provide parties with due process.23 The NLRB follows its own precedents and Board decisions can be overturned by federal courts of appeals if the agency fails to act consistently with precedent (unless a majority of the Board votes to revisit or overturn precedent in a case).24 The Board keeps its deliberations confidential and communications with parties or outside entities about pending cases are considered a violation of government and judicial ethics rules.25

In addition to these core adjudicative functions, the NLRB also occasionally engages in rulemaking, either to establish agency procedures or to articulate general principles of substantive law.26 The Board has historically acted independently in these functions and not been subject to substantive regulatory review by the White House.

Throughout its 90-year history, the NLRB has played an essential role in safeguarding the well-being of working people across the country. Because the NLRA protects both the right to form and join a union and the right to engage in employment-related collective action by workers, it is a vital tool to address a myriad of concerns that workers face in the modern economy, including sexual and racial harassment, employee misclassification, and the impact of new technology, among others. In recent years, the NLRB has been extremely effective in serving its statutory goals. In fiscal year 2024, for example, the agency recovered $56.5 million in backpay and other compensation for workers whose rights were violated and secured reinstatement offers for more than 1200 workers who were unfairly terminated from their jobs for trying to unionize or speak out about their working conditions.

The agency has been able to fulfill its mission successfully because it can enforce the law comprehensively and evenhandedly. Independence is a necessary foundation for its success. The NLRB enforces the law—against both employers and unions—without regard for whether the employer or union in question might be a close ally of the president or a supporter of the president’s political party.

How the independence of the agency has been compromised

Since President Trump took office, the historically independent functioning of the NLRB has been severely compromised. On January 28, President Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox, a NLRB member serving in her second term on the Board, whose term was not scheduled to expire until 2028. The removal of Member Wilcox from office was the first time in history that an NLRB member was removed from office by the president. Her departure left the Board without a quorum to hear cases. If the Supreme Court ultimately affirms the president’s ability to terminate NLRB members without cause, the integrity of the Board’s adjudicative process will be severely compromised, as board members will be forced to make decisions with the looming threat of termination hanging over their deliberations. For the same reasons that the framers of the Constitution protected federal judges from termination without cause, Congress should similarly be able to protect board members who adjudicate cases so they can do their jobs fairly.

President Trump’s executive orders also significantly implicate the operations of the NLRB. To be sure, the new executive orders do not expressly give the White House authority to decide or override the outcome of individual cases before independent agencies like the NLRB. However, the unprecedented level of control that the White House is now asserting over agencies could certainly be used that way. Many of the levers of control in these orders—like the ability to fund or defund particular agency actions, the requirement that all board members employ a “White House liaison,” or the unprecedented declaration that independent agencies cannot take legal positions inconsistent with the White House—would potentially allow Trump to directly dictate the outcome of cases before the Board and the substance of federal labor law. This is hardly a farfetched concern. A recent Trump executive order attempts to do just that: It directly instructs the Board to address an unsettled issue of labor law—namely, whether student athletes are considered “employees” or not—in the context of an order that makes clear what Trump’s preferred resolution of this issue would be (The White House 2025e). Such presidential interference into the day-to-day decision-making of the NLRB is completely unprecedented and undermines the fairness and impartiality of the agency’s adjudicative process.

Workers rely on the NLRB to protect critical workplace rights. A worker who has been fired for talking to coworkers about unsafe working conditions or whose employer refuses to bargain with the workers’ chosen union needs somewhere to turn to put a stop to such unfair labor practices. Without any assurance that they will get a fair hearing at the NLRB in the future, workers will be forced to resort to other strategies to make their voices heard and neither workers nor employers will have a path to resolve their disputes and move forward.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Following mass protests against Jim Crow segregation and a decades-long Civil Rights Movement, Congress established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Aiken, Salmon, and Hanges 2013). Title VII represents one of the cornerstones of our national promise of equal opportunity, protecting workers from discrimination on the job based on their race, color, national origin, religion, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), age, disability, pregnancy, or genetic information (Couch, Hersch, and Shinall 2025).27 If a worker experiences employment discrimination—such as unfair treatment in hiring, firing, promotions, job assignments, or on-the-job harassment—the EEOC is where they can turn to for help.

To fulfill this vital mission, the EEOC performs three main functions. First, for workers in the private sector, it oversees a thorough process to consider each charge of discrimination (EEOC 2025c). The EEOC will investigate charges; facilitate mediation and conciliation; and—if the agency finds cause to believe that discrimination has occurred, and conciliation fails—can opt to file a lawsuit to enforce the statute.28 While the EEOC commissioners do not directly adjudicate these cases, they must vote on whether the agency will go to court and pursue certain types of significant cases, especially those presenting novel or unsettled legal issues likely to generate public controversy (EEOC 2021).

Second, for complaints where a federal government agency is the employer, the EEOC performs a judicial role. Federal employees who file a discrimination complaint have the right to request a hearing with an administrative judge from the EEOC. If the complainant or the employing agency does not agree with the administrative judge’s decision, they can appeal to the EEOC, which hears and votes on the case as a panel of judges (EEOC 2025e).

Finally, the EEOC issues regulations, guidelines, and formal enforcement guidance, which must be approved by a majority of commissioners (EEOC 2025f, 2025g). The EEOC also issues resource documents, which do not require Commission approval (EEOC 2025h).

From the agency’s inception, Congress took steps to ensure the EEOC’s bipartisan and independent nature. No more than three of the Commission’s five members can be of the same political party and commissioners serve staggered terms of five years—longer than a single presidential administration.29 While Congress did not specifically provide “for-cause” removal protection for commissioners, the EEOC’s structural components qualify it as an independent agency whose commissioners are protected by Supreme Court precedent in Humphrey’s Executor. Additionally, the statute contains a “holdover cause” enabling sitting commissioners to serve until their successors are appointed and qualified, with limits on the maximum length of the holdover period.30 Such holdover provisions are common in independent agencies; they provide continuity and preserve institutional knowledge, while avoiding the uncertainties associated with transitions in presidential administrations and the often lengthy Senate confirmation process.

The EEOC has been extremely effective in accomplishing its mission and its work yields a high return on investment. In 2024, using a $455 million budget, the EEOC secured almost $700 million in monetary relief for about 21,000 victims of employment discrimination and educated more than 268,000 individuals nationwide about employment discrimination and their workplace rights (EEOC 2025a). In the last few years, the Commission has undertaken a number of important initiatives through both rulemaking and litigation, including implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act’s protections to ensure that pregnant workers receive reasonable accommodations in the workplace; educating the public about the implications of artificial intelligence for workplace civil rights; issuing long-awaited guidance on workplace harassment; and historically advancing employment discrimination protections for the LGBTQ+ community (EEOC 2024, 2025a).31

How the independence of the agency has been compromised

On January 27, President Trump fired EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows and Vice Chair Jocelyn Samuels before their terms were set to expire in 2028 and 2026, respectively. Their unprecedented removals left the EEOC without a three-member quorum and unable to vote on litigation recommendations or issue federal sector decisions, regulations, enforcement guidance, and other critical rulings. 32

The impact of Trump’s encroachment on the EEOC’s independence has already been felt. For example, the Commission recently dropped lawsuits it had filed on behalf of transgender workers. While agreeing that these workers are protected under civil rights laws, Commission Chair Andrea Lucas explained to Congress that she dropped the cases because her agency is not independent and must comply with President Trump’s orders targeting transgender and nonbinary people (Senate HELP 2025). In June, the EEOC also moved to drop a racial discrimination lawsuit relying on a well-established legal theory regarding the lawfulness of facially neutral policies that have a disproportionately negative impact on disadvantaged groups, again citing an executive order from President Trump (Olson and Savage 2025). According to former EEOC General Counsel David Lopez, dropping these lawsuits constitutes an “unprecedented abdication of [the agency’s] enforcement responsibilities” (Lopez 2025). By abandoning individual lawsuits in response to presidential directives that are contrary to well-established federal laws, the EEOC has effectively empowered the White House to define the contours of civil rights law, contrary to the will of Congress in establishing the EEOC.

Acting Chair Lucas has also undermined the agency’s decision-making process in response to presidential orders. Following Trump’s March 6 executive order, “Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLP,” which directs the acting chair of the EEOC to investigate the practices of large law firms, Lucas demanded information from 20 prominent law firms about diversity fellowships and other programs (The White House 2025c; EEOC 2025b). In a letter to Acting Chair Lucas, eight former EEOC members explained that this demand for information exceeds Lucas’s authority as chair. No single member of the Commission has the authority to unilaterally change the EEOC’s long-standing position—reflected in the agency’s majority-approved strategic enforcement plan—regarding employers’ diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.33 Such policy shifts have historically required a vote by the full Commission, consistent with the intent of Congress that the EEOC—like many other independent agencies—should engage in collaborative and deliberative decision-making.

The EEOC plays a critical role in ensuring that all workers in the U.S. can receive fair treatment and have an equal opportunity to succeed at work. To fully execute its mission, the EEOC must be able to interpret and enforce our civil rights laws free from political influence and presidential whims. The removal of EEOC commissioners who disagree with the president’s agenda, along with recent intrusions into the agency’s prosecutorial independence and deliberative process, is inconsistent with both the independent nature of the agency and the will of Congress, threatening the fundamental protections that everyone should enjoy in the workplace.

Consumer Product Safety Commission

Every day, hundreds of millions of consumers across the U.S. purchase new products that, if not properly designed and built, could inadvertently harm them and their families. In worst case scenarios, companies will recall faulty items from shelves, like when Samsung recalled a version of its Galaxy phone because it could overheat and catch fire; or when Infantino recalled an infant carrier due to faulty buckles that posed a fall hazard; or when Midea recalled specific window AC units because they led to mold growth and respiratory issues (CPSC 2016, 2020, 2025d). These, of course, are the very scenarios companies and consumers hope to never experience. Today, thanks in large part to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, consumers can purchase goods with a certain degree of confidence that what they are bringing into their homes won’t pose a risk to their health and safety. And when things do go wrong, consumers know that systems and processes are in place to remove dangerous goods from our stores.

Congress established the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) as an independent agency in 1972, charged with protecting consumers from unreasonable risks of injuries (Carpenter 2018). The creation of the CPSC was the result of work under a bipartisan presidential commission examining the mechanisms available at the time to protect consumers. The Commission ultimately recommended Congress pass legislation to create the CPSC. Importantly, during hearings, Congress considered whether to place the CPSC within the then Department of Health, Education and Welfare, but ultimately decided to create an independent agency to insulate the agency’s work from political pressure (Page 1974). Congress empowered the CPSC with authorities to achieve four main objectives: first, conduct research into the injuries and illnesses associated with the use of consumer products; second, facilitate the development of and adherence to safety standards—both through formal rulemaking and engaging industries to adopt voluntary standards; third, aid consumers as they seek to understand and compare the safety risks of various products; and finally, protect consumers from unreasonable risks associated with the goods they purchase.34

Today, the CPSC’s efforts cover an extremely broad set of consumer products—from children’s toys, to household appliances, cribs, and mattresses.35 Importantly, the CPSC authority covers products made both domestically and abroad.36 Beyond advancing research and standard-setting, the CPSC has numerous enforcement tools at its disposal, including conducting compliance inspections at factories, warehouses, or establishments where products are made or held. The CPSC also has the authority to obtain samples of products imported into the U.S. When the CPSC determines that a product that is already on the market poses a substantial hazard to consumers, it seeks remedial actions either by engaging companies directly to negotiate a corrective action agreement or pursuing administrative actions that culminate in a vote by the Commission and mandate for specific corrective actions. While recalling products is perhaps the most widely recognized corrective action of the CPSC, there are several actions that CPSC and companies can undertake, including: notifying the public of the hazard; modifying the product so that it is in compliance with safety standards; and providing refunds to consumers, among other actions.37

The CPSC has many of the classic characteristics of independent agencies.38 It is led and overseen by five commissioners, one of which is designated as the chair. Commissioners are appointed by the president and approved by the Senate, serving seven-year terms. By statute, they can only be removed from office for “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” Congress has also stipulated that no more than three members of the Commission could be from the same political party.

How the independence of the agency has been undermined

Last year, consumers spent more than $6.2 trillion on consumer goods, many of which are regulated by the CPSC. Most products purchased every day are safe for consumers to use in large part thanks to the ongoing efforts by the CPSC to develop and update standards as new or improved products enter the market. Nonetheless, in this year alone, CPSC has issued numerous recalls, including in once instance bike helmets which failed to protect individuals and could result in head injury (CPSC 2025a). The purpose and independence of the CPSC is as crucial as ever to consumers’ health and safety. Alarmingly though, Trump has sought to politicize this little-known agency that plays an outsized role in the day-to-day lives of everyone in the U.S.

In May, Trump fired three members of the Commission who were nominated by President Biden and had not yet served their full terms: Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, and Richard Trumka Jr. (Quinn 2025). While a federal district court and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals both found the firings unlawful and temporarily reinstated the commissioners, the Supreme Court stayed the district court’s order and they were removed from office again (Quinn 2025; Howe 2025). The activities that unfolded at the Commission during the initial period that these three Commissioners were gone highlight the potential damage of politicizing this independent agency. On May 13, 2025, the remaining two commissioners voted to stop the Federal Register from publishing a proposed regulation establishing safety standards for Lithium-Ion batteries in micro mobility products, such as e-bikes and e-scooters (CPSC 2025c). The Commission had previously approved the adoption and publication of this proposed rule in April in response to its finding that over 220 people were injured or killed by such batteries between 2019 and 2023 (CPSC 2025b). While the district court’s reinstatement of the fired commissioners enabled them to (at least temporarily) correct the actions taken in their absence, the danger to consumers of a politicized CPSC was clear.

Now that the three commissioners have been removed again, the risk to consumers returns. For example, the chair of the Commission serves as the principal executive of the CPSC and has the authority to appoint, upon approval of the Commission, a number of positions with the CPSC, including an executive director; general counsel; and assistant executive directors of compliance and administrative litigation, health sciences, and engineering, among others. Now that the three commissioners have been removed again, the chair (with the approval of the remaining member) could potentially take significant personnel actions, such as replacing industry experts with political operatives.

When Congress created the CPSC it sought to create an independent agency that established and enforced safety standards that were driven by the independent expertise of the agency and without influence from conflicts of interest or political swings of power. Yet the Trump administration’s recent efforts to undermine the CPSC and politicize its actions not only runs counter to the intent of Congress but also puts the health and safety of U.S. families at risk.

National Credit Union Administration

For more than 115 years, credit unions have provided vital financial services to individuals, businesses, and communities across the United States (NCUA 2023). As nonprofit financial institutions that are membership-based, credit unions have long provided services—including low-interest car loans and mortgages—to individuals and communities that may be underserved by corporate banks. Today, more than 143 million people in the U.S. are members of a credit union (NCUA 2025c). This includes, for example: the Teachers Credit Union, which was founded more than 70 years ago by educators in New York; credit unions that serve rural areas like the Guadalupe Credit Union in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and credit unions like the State Employees Credit Union, which provides services to state employees in North Carolina, among others.39

The first credit unions in the United States were established in the early 1900s and continued to grow in numbers as states—beginning with Massachusetts—passed laws to certify and regulate them (NCUA 2023). In 1934, following the financial crisis of the Great Depression, Congress passed the Federal Credit Union Act (FCUA), which created a uniform federal standard and process for certifying and regulating credit unions.40 Originally, Congress charged the Farm Credit Administration—an independent agency—to implement the FCUA (NCUA 1989). In the years following, the federal credit union system moved to a variety of federal agencies, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). By 1970, Congress created a stand-alone independent agency—the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA)—headed by a single administrator. And then in just a few short years, Congress again amended the Act in 1978 to establish the structure that remains in place today (NCUA 2023). Most notably, Congress replaced the single administrator of the NCUA with a three-member board, capping a long series of actions to ensure the federal oversight of credit unions in the United States was entrusted to an independent agency and sufficiently insulated from swings in the political views of the executive branch. The NCUA’s independence allows it to make unbiased decisions based on sound financial principles to best serve the communities that credit unions support (ACU 2025).

Today, the NCUA charters and regulates credit unions, ensuring that members’ hard-earned money remains safe and that they can access the financial resources they need to pursue dreams like higher education and home ownership. By the beginning of 2025, there were more than 143 million members of federally insured credit unions across the United States. Combined, these members have nearly $2.4 trillion dollars invested in their credit unions (NCUA 2025c). The NCUA plays a vital role in ensuring that credit unions are stable institutions and that members’ deposits are adequately protected, most notably through the management of the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund. Like the FDIC, this fund insures members’ deposits up to $250,000 (NCUA 2025b). The NCUA also enforces a range of regulations that aim to maintain the strength and stability of the credit union system. This includes, for example, regulations regarding the investment and deposit activities, capital adequacy, and mergers of credit unions, among other activities

Since 1979, a three-member board has led and managed the activities of the NCUA. The board is structured similarly to other independent agencies. Under the FCUA, board members are appointed by the president and approved by the Senate to serve a six-year term.41 The statute states that “[n]ot more than two members of the board shall be members of the same political party.”42 Importantly, when Congress restructured the NCUA so that it was led by the board, it removed all references in the statute to the leadership “serving at the pleasure of the President.”43 While many day-to-day functions of the agency, including examination and supervision of credit unions, are executed by agency staff, the board approves and carries out crucial functions of the agency. Specifically, the board sets policies and procedures for the agency; directs and approves its regulatory actions, including proposed and final rules; and serves as a final appeals board for agency actions against credit unions. Under the statute and regulations, the board meets every month and must have a quorum of a majority of board members to hold meetings.44

How the agency’s independence has been undermined

In April, President Trump took unprecedented actions that undermined the NCUA’s overall independence and ability to function. Specifically, Trump fired two Democratic members of the board—Todd Harper and Tanya Otsuka—leaving a single board member. Harper and Otsuka have sued President Trump over their firing claiming that the actions violated both the Federal Credit Union Act as well as the Constitution.45 While a district court found they were unlawfully terminated, a court of appeals stayed the district court’s order and they remain unable to perform their duties. While this litigation is pending there is significant confusion and uncertainty about how the NCUA board can or will function.

As discussed above, the FCUA states that there must be a majority of board members to have a quorum and meet. Crucially, the statute does not explicitly contemplate a situation in which there are vacancies on the board, let alone only one member left. Indeed, the statute has holdover protections to ensure there aren’t vacancies on the board, allowing members to serve beyond their six-year term until a replacement member is approved.

The actions taken by Trump in the short term will likely hamper the ability of the NCUA to carry out important functions, including an annual rolling review of one-third of its regulations. This year the NCUA has identified 36 regulations which will be reviewed by the agency (NCUA 2025a). Additionally, fired board member Harper recently highlighted that there are a number of individual credit unions whose ratings by the NCUA indicate that the board should be engaging more closely in the review and potential regulatory actions against these entities, which combined hold $112 billions in assets (Mullen 2025). Without a full board in place to take necessary actions, these credit unions and their members may be at financial risk.

Conversely, if the single remaining board member attempts to move forward with typical board actions on his own, this would directly undermine the intent of Congress and the statute, i.e., ensuring that the agency and board are not influenced entirely by a single political party. These actions would also most likely be subject to legal challenges, creating additional uncertainty in the credit union market.46 Similarly, if courts eventually allow the firings of the Democratic board members to stand, this would be a significant departure from Congress’ clearly expressed intent to move the management of the NCUA away from a structure that is under the direct influence of the president.

Trump’s executive orders intruding on agency independence also pose challenges for the NCUA. For example, the new requirement that agencies submit proposed and final regulations to OMB for White House review and approval is particularly challenging for the NCUA, which reviews one-third of its regulations every year and issued 12 new proposed or final regulations in 2024 alone.47 At a minimum, extensive involvement by the White House will inevitably delay the regulatory process. More alarming is the prospect that the White House will demand substantive changes to regulations (whether new proposals or regulations already on the books) that undermine the NCUA’s independence or do not reflect the best judgments of its expert leaders, putting the communities that rely on affected credit unions at risk.

For the 143 million people who have their savings in a credit union, the uncertainty at the NCUA board at best may cause greater financial stress and uncertainty. For some, the administration’s actions may call into question the ability of the federal government to fairly and adequately regulate the financial institutions people have entrusted their savings with or secured loans from. Over time, undue political influence over the NCUA—either through changes in the board structure or overt influence of its regulatory process—could create instability in the credit union system and subsequently motivate members to move out of the system entirely, undermining the financial security of the many unique communities that credit unions serve.

Conclusion

For more than 100 years, the United States has relied on independent agencies to provide essential protections to workers, consumers, retirees, and the general public. Congress carefully and intentionally designed these agencies—like the Federal Reserve and the Environmental Protection Agency—to ensure they could fully realize their missions without being directly affected by political influence, presidential favoritism, or interest group politics. While the laws these agencies administer have been modified periodically through the years, Congress has not wavered from its commitment to preserve their independence. These agencies can serve the public effectively because they prioritize expertise, promote stable and consistent enforcement of the law, and make policy choices that elevate long-term public good over short-term political gain.

Preserving independence is about more than good governance: It’s about protecting the public. These agencies ensure that workers are able to join together with their co-workers to form a union and bargain for better wages and working conditions, apply for a job knowing that they are protected from discrimination, put their earnings in a local credit union, and purchase household goods without fear of them being unsafe.

Since taking office, President Trump has waged an unprecedented assault on independent agencies, in some cases firing board members and commissioners despite explicit legal prohibitions, politicizing agencies’ rulemaking processes, and—in many instances—bringing the functions of these agencies to all but a halt. These actions not only have immediate consequences for workers and the public—they also create tremendous potential for abuses of power over time that could let wealthy corporations pad their profits at the expense of ordinary people’s lives and livelihoods. The systematic attack on independent agencies deserves more attention and opposition from Congress, both to defend its prerogative to create public watchdogs within the executive branch and to protect the people these important agencies were designed to serve.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Patrick Oakford for his invaluable contributions and insight in the production of this report and gratefully acknowledge Century Foundation Intern Zoe Wang for her essential research assistance.

Notes

1. 28 U.S.C. § 516 (2017).

2. Sometimes agencies only have independent authority to litigate in certain subject matter areas, while others have independent authority to litigate only until a matter gets to the Supreme Court (at which point the agency is represented by the solicitor general). Rarely, an agency will have independent litigating authority that encompasses even Supreme Court litigation—with the primary modern example being the Federal Trade Commission.

3. The precise statutory language establishing such removal protections can vary but typically says that appointed officials can only be removed for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, and malfeasance in office” or some similar standard and sometimes requires elements of due process before a removal can take place, such as notice and opportunity for a hearing.

4. See Table 4 in Selin and Lewis (2018).

5. The National Labor Relations Act, for example, does not contain any requirement that the National Labor Relations Board be comprised of bipartisan members, but historically a bipartisan balance has been maintained.

6. For example, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency must have extensive understanding of financial management, capital markets, mortgage securities, and housing finance. For further information, see Table 7 in Selin and Lewis (2018).

7. See Table 12 in Selin and Lewis (2018).

8. See Table 12 in Selin and Lewis (2018).

9. For example, Merit Systems Protection Board Chair Cathy Harris’s termination message cited no reason for her dismissal (Harris v. Bessent, D.C. Cir. R. 2025); Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner Jocelyn Samuels’s termination message criticized her for “enacting or enforcing the Biden administration’s radical Title VII guidance” (Samuels v. Trump, D.D.C. 2025); and National Labor Relations Board Member Gwynne Wilcox termination message cited, among other things, “improperly cabin[ing] employers’ rights to speak on the subject of unionization” and supporting the Board’s joint-employer rule (Bruenig 2025).

10. Harris v. Bessent; Samuels v. Trump; Bruenig (2025).

11. 295 U.S. 602 (1935).

12. While the Supreme Court subsequently narrowed the scope of Humphrey’s Executor’s reach to exclude independent agencies headed by only one official rather than a multimember body (see Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 591 U.S. 2020) the Court subsequently reaffirmed that Humphrey’s Executor remains good law. See Collins v. Yellen, 594 U.S. (2021) explaining that Seila Law “did not revisit our prior decisions allowing certain limitations on the President’s removal.”).

13. See Acting Solicitor General Harris’s February 2025 letter to Senator Dick Durbin (Harris 2025), indicating the Department of Justice’s intention to argue that Humphrey’s Executor should be overruled.

14. Wilcox v. Trump (D.D.C. 2025).

15. Wilcox v. Trump.

16. See The White House (2025d). The order strongly implies that any regulation whose legality was previously upheld under the deferential Chevron standard of judicial review applied by the federal courts before the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (U.S. 2024) should be considered for immediate repeal. (This directive is of dubious legality, as it instructs agencies not to use the notice-and-comment process required by the Administrative Procedure Act to repeal a substantive regulation. It also stands in significant tension with the Supreme Court’s explicit direction in Loper Bright that prior cases upholding agency action under the Chevron standard remain good law).

17. See Starbucks Corp. v. McKinney, 602 U.S. 339, 355 (2024) (Jackson, J., concurring) (describing federal courts’ “ignominious history”); see also Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks, 398 U.S. 235, 250 (1970).

18. See Roosevelt (1935) noting these functions “should not be confused.”

19. Roosevelt (1935). The Act thus adopted the same independent agency model that the Supreme Court had endorsed for the Federal Trade Commission in Humphrey’s Executor, a decision handed down less than two months before Congress established the Board. See Free Enter. Fund v. Public Co. Accounting Oversight Bd. (2010), 561 U.S. 477, 547 (Breyer, J., dissenting); Dish Network Corp. v. NLRB (2020). 953 F.3d 370, 375 n.2 (5th Cir. 2020).

20. See 29 U.S.C. § 153(a).

21. See ExxonMobil Rsch. & Eng’g Co., Inc. v. NLRB, No. 23-60495, 2025 WL 782692 (5th Cir. Mar. 12, 2025), which upholds the agency’s vacatur of a prior decision where an NLRB member participated in the case in violation of federal ethics rules regarding financial conflicts of interest.

22. See Pillsbury Co. v. Federal Trade Comm’n, 354 F.2d 952 (5th Cir. 1966), which overturned an administrative decision of the Federal Trade Commission that was subject to undue congressional influence.

23. See Berkshire Emps. Ass’n of Berkshire Knitting Mills v. NLRB 121 F.2d 235 (3d Cir. 1941).

24. See NLRB v. CNN America (2017).

25. See OIG-NLRB (2012), which finds that a member’s chief counsel improperly disclosed deliberative information about pending matters to parties outside the Board.

26. 29 U.S.C. § 156.

27. See Bostock v. Clayton Cty., 590 U.S. 644 (2020).

28. See EEOC (2025d). Otherwise, the agency will issue the charging party a “right to sue” letter, enabling them to sue on their own behalf in federal court.

29. Civil Rights Act of 1964, Pub. L. No. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241 (1964).

30. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-4(e).

31. See Macy v. Department of Justice, EEOC Appeal No. 0120120821, 2012 WL 1435995 (EEOC Apr. 20, 2012) and Lawrence v. Office of Personnel Management, EEOC Appeal No. 0120162065 (May 30, 2024).

32. The five-member commission is now comprised of only two members: Republican Chair Andrea Lucas and Democratic Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal. EEOC’s general counsel, Karla Gilbride, was also fired that same day. Former Commissioner Samuels has since filed a lawsuit.

33. The EEOC initiates most investigation in response to complaints filed by employees. Commissioners can file their own charge, but it would not be made public and would require the commissioner to provide evidence of discrimination under penalty of perjury. This is to prevent the Commission from seeking to intimidate employers through public pressure.

34. 15 U.S. Code § 2051; see Carpenter (2018) for a discussion of rulemaking authority. 

35. Congress excluded from the agency’s scope of coverage products that are regulated by other federal agencies, such as motor vehicles, tobacco products, food, and drugs.

36. See Carpenter (2018).

37. See Carpenter (2018). 

38. 15 USC § 2053.

39. For more information on these credit unions, see TFCU (2025), GCU (2025), and SECU (2025).

40. Pub. Law. No. 76-466.

41. 12 U.S. Code §1752a.

42. 12 U.S. Code §1752a(b)1.

43. See Harper v. Bessent.

44. 12 U.S. Code §1752a(d); 12 CFR 791.5.

45. See Harper v. Bessent.

46. The FCUA does not include a numerical requirement to establish a quorum but instead simply states that “a majority of the Board shall constitute a quorum.” See 12 U.S. Code §1752a (d).

47. See: 89 FR 104865; 89 FR 79380; 89 FR 79397; 89 FR 67890; 89 FR 65242; 89 FR 64538; 89 FR 60549; 89 FR 60329; 89 FR 45602; 89 FR 31117; 89 FR 17710; 89 FR 1441.

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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

1

1

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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2

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

3

3

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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4

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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5

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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Discrimination in the workplace—either in employment, promotion, job assignments, pay, benefits, discipline, discharge, and layoffs—is illegal in the United States. Research shows that actions taken to reduce discrimination not only improve equity but also support economic growth. Federal law defines workplace discrimination on the basis of a worker’s membership in designated protected classes, with the rationale that disparate treatment violates the law when it would not have happened to an individual “but for” that aspect of their identity. These protected classes are enshrined by legislation and include the following:

• Race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity), and national origin (Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964)
• Age (Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967)
• Disability (Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990)
• Genetic information (Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008)

The extent to which these protected classes can be expanded is subject to legal interpretation. For example, over time, the definition of “sex discrimination” has been amended to explicitly include disparate treatment related to pregnancy and childbirth with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, as well as sexual orientation and gender identity following Supreme Court decisions in 2020.

In addition to protection from unjust unequal treatment, federal law also protects workers from retaliation for filing discrimination claims or from beginning the process of filing a discrimination claim. These federal laws cover most employees whether they work full time or part time and irrespective of citizenship status. Employers with 20 or more employees are required to comply with all nondiscrimination laws at the federal level; employers with less than 20 employees are still subject to many nondiscrimination standards, though standards are less stringent.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is the independent federal agency responsible for investigating claims of employment discrimination at the federal level and for enforcing federal workplace nondiscrimination law. The EEOC does this both by fielding discrimination claims against employers and by requiring annual reports from employers on employment outcomes by protected class characteristics to assess potential patterns of discrimination.

What are the threats to federal workplace nondiscrimination protections?

Current threats to workplace nondiscrimination protections include:

• Executive actions constraining EEOC’s mission and functions: Since taking office, Trump has undermined or limited key functions of the EEOC by:
  • Illegally firing two of the three commissioners and the general counsel, leaving the Commission unable to alter policy or vote on rulemaking for several months. In October 2025, the Senate confirmed Brittany Panuccio as an EEOC commissioner, establishing a three-person quorum. With a quorum in place, the EEOC will likely rescind their 2024–2028 strategic enforcement plan, guidance on arrest and conviction records, and EEO-1 reporting requirements. Additionally, the agency will likely move forward with announced plans to significantly revise its Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Rule and Harassment Guidance.  
  • Imposing new limits on the collection of data necessary to accurately assess discriminatory impact by shortening annual reporting periods and removing nonbinary gender reporting entirely from forms used to collect demographic data from private employers and federal contractors.
  • Directing the EEOC to focus more on so-called “DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination and anti-American national origin bias and discrimination.”
• Politicizing the EEOC and constraining independent state and local agencies: EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas has repeatedly affirmed her commitment to restructuring the EEOC’s priorities toward those of the administration, rather than enforcing anti-discrimination law as an independent federal agency. In an effort to impose the administration’s agenda on state and local enforcement agencies, Lucas has proposed changes that would weaponize the funding relationship between those agencies and the EEOC. While state and local agencies operate independently, they receive funding from the EEOC in the form of reimbursements for jointly filed cases they take on behalf of the federal agency. With the exception of a few large states, such as New York or California, most states significantly rely on this funding to cover their operational costs. Since serving as acting chair, Lucas has reversed course on the EEOC’s enforcement of disparate impact and sex discrimination cases by:
  • Withholding funding for state and local Fair Employment Practice Agencies (FEPAs) that choose to take on cases concerning gender identity discrimination.
  • Threatening to decertify state and local FEPAs that draw conclusions on gender identity and disparate impact charges that differ from those of the EEOC.
  • Instructing the agency to close charges that solely concern disparate impact by September 30, 2025, without developing them for litigation or for conciliation.
• Diminished EEOC enforcement capacity: The extent to which workers are protected from workplace discrimination at the federal level is dependent on the EEOC’s capacity to monitor employment practices, investigate claims of workplace discrimination, and reliably enforce sanctions against employers who violate nondiscrimination law. But for decades, inadequate funding and staffing has limited the EEOC’s capacity to investigate and resolve charges in a timely manner. Actions of the second Trump administration further exacerbate these problems:
  • In March 2025, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced plans to close and consolidate EEOC field offices. Once the EEOC reestablishes a quorum, the agency may begin these closures, which threaten the job security of EEOC field staff and further constrain their enforcement capacity.
  • The EEOC plans to break up its data analytics office, signaling that robust data collection and analysis—critical tools for enforcement and assessing charges—will be less of a priority for the agency. Rolling back data collection is a step toward the Project 2025 prescribed goal of ending EEO-1 data collection.
• Executive actions attacking nondiscrimination law: The Trump administration has prohibited the consideration of disparate impact liability in discrimination claims, making it more difficult to hold employers accountable for unfair employment practices and outcomes without being able to prove that employers explicitly intended to discriminate (including efforts to hold companies accountable for AI-driven algorithmic bias).  

While many threats are coming directly from the federal level, workplace nondiscrimination protections are also under threat in states that have chosen to follow the lead of the White House in passing anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) laws. Many states have already closed DEI-related offices and initiatives, cut funding to programs, and restricted the use of language and consideration of protected classes in higher education. While these actions do not remove existing workplace nondiscrimination laws, workers in those states could be left without recourse if legislative trends continue and federal nondiscrimination protections continue to deteriorate.

How can states maintain and strengthen workplace nondiscrimination protections?

States have legal authority to establish their own employment discrimination laws that provide more expansive coverage than federal law. States can provide legal protections for more traits or characteristics, lower the minimum employment threshold required to file a discrimination claim, and extend the window of time employees have to file a claim after the alleged discriminatory incident occurred.

Many states and local governments have Fair Employment Practices Agencies1 that investigate workplace discrimination claims in accordance with state and local nondiscrimination law, often in concert with field offices of the federal EEOC. FEPAs may have authority to enforce state or local standards for nondiscrimination that exceed those laid out by the federal government. Workers who believe they have been discriminated against can file a claim with the EEOC and/or their state or local FEPA, depending on the standards being violated, the types of relief available to victims, the deadlines for filing charges, or other factors related to the claim. The Trump administration is actively working to undermine the independence of FEPAs by weaponizing their funding arrangement, particularly on enforcement of disparate impact and gender identity discrimination protections. For state agencies that rely on federal funding for a significant share of their operating budget, these changes present serious challenges to their ability to properly maintain and expand enforcement capacity.

Step I: Update state statutes to lock in current federal protections 

Most states have passed state-level employment discrimination laws that codify employment discrimination protections for at least the same protected classes that are federally protected. Today, 24 states and Washington, D.C., have discrimination laws that cover a more expansive range of protected traits than federal law. However, 19 states, including Idaho, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, offer less protection than federal laws. Alabama’s employment discrimination law is by far the least comprehensive, as it only protects against age discrimination from 40 years of age.  

Other states have enacted certain discrimination laws that only protect public employees. For example, Georgia’s discrimination laws have mixed levels of protection based on the sector of employment. Protections for discrimination against race, color, religion, pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity are only extended to public-sector employees. Private-sector employees are provided protections for disability and equal pay discrimination. Similarly, Mississippi’s employment discrimination laws only apply to public employees.  

States typically have a commission or division dedicated to enforcing state nondiscrimination laws. Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi do not have their own state agency and solely rely on the EEOC for anti-discrimination enforcement. Additionally, North Carolina does not have an agency where private employees can file discrimination claims.

As the Trump administration makes it easier for employers to discriminate by weakening the federal EEOC, failure to cover private employers under state law and a lack of state level enforcement capacity will leave even more workers in those states without recourse. States can—and should—act to plug these gaps by, at a minimum:

• Ensuring their state code includes at least all the protected classes covered in federal nondiscrimination law;
• Ensuring state nondiscrimination laws cover all workers (in both public and private sectors) and mirror federal employment minimum thresholds for coverage; and
• Establishing and adequately funding a state commission or division with enforcement authority that, at minimum, mirrors federal policies for filing deadlines.

Step II: Include additional protections already implemented in other states 

• Extend protections to additional traits: Most states have extended protections for marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. While states may be financially disincentivized to pursue cases concerning gender identity discrimination, there is currently no threat to simply extending legal protections. Some states have also incorporated additional traits such as reproductive health decision-making, medical conditions, status as a victim of domestic violence, housing status, arrest/court/conviction record, and military or veteran status as protected traits (see Figure A). Additionally, several states including New York and Oregon and D.C. have lowered the age limit to be considered for age discrimination.  
• Codify inclusive definitions for protected traits to fortify employment nondiscrimination protections: Many states include definitions of protected traits that better encompass the types of discrimination employees may face. For example, since 2019, the CROWN Act has been adopted by states across the nation to include hair discrimination as a form of racial discrimination. More than half of U.S. states have passed the CROWN Act and eight states have defined race-based discrimination to include discrimination based on traits associated with race in their state code. 

Figure A

Step III: Modernize nondiscrimination policies by extending and locking in coverage across classes of workers and collecting comprehensive data

• Extend coverage to contract workers: Independent contractors are not considered employees, so they may not be inherently covered by employment discrimination laws. As of 2019, only four states (Maryland, Minnesota, New York, and Rhode Island) protect independent contractors from discrimination protection, while 24 states and D.C. explicitly exclude them. Extending discrimination protections to independent contractors is important as they have significantly less labor protections than employees. Additionally, states could explicitly enforce anti-discrimination and equal employment opportunity laws for state contract workers to ensure fair employment practices among private employers that conduct business with the state. In a climate with increased hostility against those who are not white, male, heterosexual, and cisgender, it is imperative that the classification of a worker does not dictate the rights they have to protect themselves from discrimination.
• Emphasize protections for workers regardless of their citizenship and immigration status: Federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of national origin, and employees are protected by Equal Employment Opportunity statutes regardless of citizenship or immigration status. Given changing federal treatment of immigrants, states should emphasize and enforce fair treatment regardless of documentation status to ensure workers remain protected. They should also strengthen anti-retaliation protections and practices.  
• Collect employment and pay data at the state level: Federally, the EEOC requires employers with more than 100 employees to submit an annual report (the EEO-1 form) providing critical workforce demographic data. With the future of federal data collection at risk, states should seek to collect their own equal employment data, including pay data, to support anti-discrimination enforcement mechanisms. Currently, only three (California, Illinois, Massachusetts) states require employers to submit this data.

Additional recommended resources 

• Trump is making it easier for employers to discriminate. This stifles equity and hurts economic growth. (Economic Policy Institute) 

• Trump-led attacks on equity are setting the stage for our next public health crisis (Economic Policy Institute) 
• Trump’s assault on independent agencies endangers us all (Economic Policy Institute and The Century Foundation) 

Editor’s note: This piece was revised on October 24, 2025, to add an “Additional recommended resources” section and include updates on federal and state policy developments that took place after initial publication

1. These agencies are often referred to as commissions on civil rights, human rights, human relations, etc. See a list of agencies here: University of Minnesota Human Rights Library.

The bill reflects a broader national trend: In the lead-up to the fall 2025 school year, roughly a dozen states have passed anti-DEI legislation targeting higher education, including bans on DEI offices and trainings, censorship of equity topics in classrooms, and prohibitions on diversity statements in admissions and hiring. Ohio’s case, however, highlights how this agenda evolves differently across states.

Unlike some states, Ohio has historically maintained a strong state law protecting public employees’ rights to unionize and collectively bargain—including the legally protected right to strike. And unlike many states, Ohio has never adopted anti-union so-called “right-to-work” (RTW) legislation. Indeed, past efforts to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights (or to introduce RTW legislation) were met with intense and successful public opposition from Ohio voters. That history helps explain why legislators this year combined anti-DEI measures with new restrictions targeting only faculty unions: It is the latest variation in a decades-long pattern of conservative efforts to chip away at worker power and limit equity gains—most recently by demonizing educators and public education systems.

These recent right-wing attacks on public universities, public schools, and unions are not random; they target institutions that have historically expanded racial, gender, and economic equity for working people—which is precisely why they are under assault today.

Cost to teachers and unions

While Ohio’s legislation targets higher education faculty, K–12 unions have also been on the front lines of these fights. Teachers’ unions have been at the forefront of defending against the Trump administration’s anti-union and anti-equity policies, serving as plaintiffs in nearly a quarter of the education-related lawsuits filed this past spring. These lawsuits seek to block the administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education; eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; and bar collective bargaining for teachers at the more than 160 Department of Defense schools. On the state level, teacher unions have also been fighting to increase funding for early child care, K–12 education, and health care, and to block private school vouchers.

Given the explicit attacks on education at both the federal and state levels, educators and their unions across K–12 and higher education have been increasingly vulnerable to political and legal efforts to dictate what they can teach. In some cases, anti-equity laws are also being paired with anti-union provisions that weaken the right to collectively bargain. Earlier this year, for example, over 50 universities were under investigation from by the Department of Education for allegedly using “racial preferences and stereotypes in education programs and activities.” At the same time, K–12 teachers face the threat of losing their jobs or their schools’ state funding for using inclusive curricula that address race, gender, or sexual orientation. These efforts reflect a broader strategy by state and local governments to curb so-called “indoctrination” and censor education at every level.

In conjunction with state anti-DEI attacks, some states have taken a much bolder approach in disempowering public-sector employees and their right to unionize. This year, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed a collective bargaining ban across all of Utah’s public sectors including education, transit, and law enforcement. Teachers—the largest group of public employees in the state—are disproportionately affected by the bill. Many educators see the measure as an effort to clear the way for an ultraconservative education agenda. The backlash has been immediate: Voters have already filed a ballot initiative to repeal the law—echoing Ohio’s 2011 SB5 fight, when an attempted rollback of strong public-sector bargaining rights was overturned at the ballot box. In recent years, Utah lawmakers have pushed to eliminate DEI programs, expand school choice vouchers, and restrict transgender bathroom access—the last of which passed earlier this year.

Across the country, state legislators have advanced broad anti-equity measures while simultaneously attempting to weaken education unions to push those agendas forward. This dual threat to public education and organized labor represents a direct attack on worker power and equity, placing both students and teachers at risk.

Undermining equity by undermining unions

Anti-equity policies will likely continue to affect postsecondary curricula, enrollment, and the strength of teachers’ unions. Of the 12 states that enacted anti-DEI legislation this year, many are also states where public-sector workers—including teachers and higher education faculty—have limited or no collective bargaining rights. Research shows that weaker bargaining protections are associated with lower union density, lower wages, and wider gender and racial pay gaps. By weakening organized labor, these policies diminish one of the strongest forces for challenging anti-equity agendas and create conditions for exclusionary laws to advance with less resistance. Across states, however, the more consistent factor is Republican-majority legislatures advancing a nationally coordinated set of anti-DEI and anti-union measures. This overlap underscores how linking attacks on equity and labor reinforces the harm inflicted in both areas.

Taken together, these efforts reveal a coordinated strategy: advancing anti-equity legislation while simultaneously undermining the unions best positioned to resist it. By weakening collective bargaining rights, lawmakers not only silence educators’ voices in shaping policy but also strip them of the power to fight for fair wages, inclusive classrooms, and supportive learning environments.

Ultimately, the erosion of both equity initiatives and labor protections jeopardizes the future of public education and public sector work. These attacks are designed not only to silence inclusive teaching and weaken unions, but also to strip away educational and economic opportunities for Black, brown, and low-income students and to erode good jobs for Black, brown, and working-class educators. Public universities, public schools, and unions have long been imperfect yet critical institutions for advancing racial and gender equity and expanding opportunity. It is precisely because of that role that they now face some of the harshest and most intertwined attacks. Protecting worker power and advancing equity are intersecting goals, and both are essential to building better schools, and a thriving economy, that serves all communities.