March 19, 2026
Between 2024 and 2025, Black women-owned employer businesses grew by 13%.
The September Jobs Report in 2025 revealed the unemployment rate for Black women hit 7.5%. The crisis caused Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley to push for action to address it. By January 2026, the unemployment rate had dropped slightly to 6.3%, but remained higher than the 5.4% recorded the year before.
National Partnership leadership describes these numbers as a deliberate unraveling. As the organization pointed out, the first year of the Trump administration undercut protections for workers that directly impacted Black women.
Pressley agreed, stating the Trump administration’s “reckless mass firings,” along with the growing affordability crisis and relentless attacks on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives, have hurt Black women in the workforce.
National Partnership President Jocelyn Frye put it in historical context:
“Black women have a long history as workers in the United States – from the early horrors of their traumatic, involuntary arrival as forced slave laborers to their present-day reality where they must navigate persistent gender and racial norms and expectations about workplace roles and job advancement opportunities.”
That’s why it’s no surprise that Black women are building their own tables.
Black Women Are Betting On Themselves Because They Have To
More Black women in the United States are becoming entrepreneurs. In fact, according to Wells Fargo’s recent report, “The Impact of Women Businesses,” Black women are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs. Between 2024 and 2025, Black women-owned employer businesses grew by 13%, and their revenue increased by nearly 6%. For Black women-owned businesses without employees, revenue also grew by 8%, and the businesses grew by 13%.
While the report attributes the rise in women-owned businesses to “strong entrepreneurial ambition,” there’s one factor missing from the equation, especially for Black women: the rug was pulled from underneath them.
“Black/African American, Asian American, and younger women are driving the future of entrepreneurship,” researchers noted in the report. “In 2024, Asian American and Black/African American-owned businesses were more likely to be started by women than men and Millennial and Gen Z startup entrepreneurs were more likely to be younger entrepreneurs, according to Gusto survey research.”
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