By theArkansas Black Vitality Staff

March 8, 2025 – As President Trump and billionaire Tesla and Twitter owner Elon Musk aggressively cut federal government jobs through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), monthly state and U.S. jobless data show the trickle-down effect is disproportionately impacting Black workers.

For March, the jobless rate in Arkansas and across the U.S. for Black workers was well above the unemployment rate for their white, Hispanic and Asian peers. The state’s latest unemployment report for February, released on March 28 by the Division of Workforce Services (DWS) in conjunction with the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) arm, shows that Arkansas’ unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.6% between January and February.

For Black workers, however, the state jobless rate is now at 4.3%, well above the state average. Nationally, the spread between the U.S. and Black jobless rate is much broader. In March, the national unemployment rate held at 4.2%, which is two percentage points lower than the Black jobless rate at 6.2%

Between February and March, the U.S. economy added 228,000 new jobs to employer payrolls, which exceeded Wall Street expectations but had not fully absorbed the thousands of federal workers that the Trump administration’s DOGE team has boasted would be laid off.

The March job report was released one day after President Trump announced that 10% global tariffs would take effect at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday (today). The latest tariffs are in addition to earlier import duties imposed on specific countries and industries, including a 25% tariff on foreign automakers.

In response to the president’s tariff-focused trade policy, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 2,200 points during Friday morning trading, a day after crashing 1,600 points amid a frantic sell-off on Wall Street.

Ahead of the national job report, global outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas announced that U.S.-based employers cut 275,240 jobs in March, a 60% increase from the 172,017 cuts announced one month prior. It is up 205% from the 90,309 cuts announced in the same month in 2024, which was the highest monthly total recorded last year.

“Job cut announcements were dominated last month by Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] plans to eliminate positions in the federal government. It would have otherwise been a fairly quiet month for layoffs,” Andrew Challenger, Senior Vice President and workplace expert for Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Over the last two months, DOGE actions have been attributed to 280,253 layoff plans of federal workers and contractors impacting 27 agencies, according to Challenger tracking. An additional 4,429 job cuts have resulted from the downstream effects of reducing federal aid or terminating contracts, primarily affecting nonprofit and healthcare organizations.

March’s total is the third-highest monthly total ever recorded. The highest monthly total occurred in April 2020, with 671,129 cuts recorded, followed by May 2020, with 397,016. It is the highest total for March on record, since Challenger began reporting on job cut plans in 1989.

So far this year, employers have announced 497,052, the highest year-to-date and quarterly total since Q1 2009, when 578,510 job cuts were announced. It is up 93% from the 257,254 cuts announced during the same period in 2024 and an increase of 227% from the 152,116 cuts announced in the previous quarter. 

Additionally, U.S. companies are scaling back their hiring plans. Companies’ hiring plans fell in March from 34,580 in February to 13,198. So far this year, companies plan to hire 53,867 workers, a 16% decrease from the 64,163 new hires announced in the first quarter of 2024. It is the lowest Q1 hiring total since 2012, when 52,540 new hiring plans were announced.

Challenger also tracks job cuts by headquarters location unless the announcement specifies where the layoffs will occur. The South region saw the most substantial decline in job cuts, dropping 41% from 33,031 in 2024 to 19,476 in 2025. Despite this, several Southern states saw more job cut plans than last year.

The East region has experienced a steep increase in job cuts, primarily due to the cuts conducted by DOGE. The East experienced a 277% year-over-year increase from 94,406 to 355,992. The District of Columbia saw the largest increase from 34,120 in the first quarter of 2024 to 278,711 in 2025.

The Midwest region saw significant job cut activity, with a 25% increase from 37,639 in Q1 2024 to 47,063 in 2025. The largest increase occurred in Ohio and Nebraska, while Missouri, Wisconsin, and Indiana saw significant drops. The West region experienced an overall decline of 19%, dropping from 92,178 in 2024 to 74,521 in 2025. Texas, Arizona, and Oklahoma have experienced an increase in job cuts this year.

Meanwhile, new BLS data shows that occupations held by Black workers are not only more susceptible to federal and private sector layoffs, but employers that hire Black workers in white-collar and blue-collar professions are paying them less than their white co-workers.

For example, federal government employment declined by 4,000 in March, including a loss of more than 900 postal workers. In recent weeks, DOGE has stated that it plans to eliminate at least 10,000 USPS jobs this year, with the ultimate goal of privatizing the postal service and eliminating union workers.

BLS data shows that the U.S. Postal Service is one of the largest employers of Black workers in the U.S. by percentage. Of the approximately 635,000 USPS workers, 40% or over 254,000 are Black.

In Arkansas, a new BLS report shows that many professions that hire Black workers pay salaries well below the national average. And in those instances where Black workers’ income exceeds the national average, the pay is usually less than that of their white peers.

For instance, production occupations that employ a large percentage of Black and other working-class workers had 8.7 million employees in May 2024, representing 5.7% of total national employment, according to BLS data. The annual mean wage across all production occupations was $50,090, less than the U.S. average wage of $67,920.

In Arkansas, professionals ranging from CEOs to janitors make less than their peers nationally.  Overall, the 1.28 million workers in the Arkansas labor force earn an average annual salary of $53,000. Production and manufacturing workers bring home approximately $ 44,000 annually, which is well below the state and national averages and that of their peers in other states.

Nationally, there are 22.1 million Black workers in the labor force, including 20.9 million over the age of 16 who are employed, and another 1.2 million who are unemployed and seeking work. There are slightly more Black women in the national labor pool at 10.86 million, compared to 10.51 million Black men. That said the unemployment rate for Black men over 20 years old is 6.1%, compared to 5.1% for Black women. Black teens have an outsized jobless rate of 20.8%, well above the national average at 12.7%

The BLS data does not include Black workers who have dropped out of the workforce due to a lack of work and inability to get hired. According to Pew Center Research, the workforce experiences for Black workers are varied but stand out from people of other races and ethnicities on several key measures: They are more likely to be employed in specific postal work, transit, health care and security fields; report experiencing more racial discrimination on the job; and place a higher value on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the workplace.

Black workers are the most likely to say they’ve experienced discrimination at work because of their race or ethnicity, according to a February 2023 Center survey of U.S. workers. About four-in-ten Black workers (41%) say they have experienced discrimination or been treated unfairly by an employer in hiring, pay or promotions because of their race or ethnicity. Much smaller shares of Asian (25%), Hispanic (20%) and White (8%) workers say the same.

Among Black workers, 48% of men and 36% of women say they’ve experienced discrimination or unfair treatment by an employer due to their race