A pair of jobs reports for the month of January indicate that despite an otherwise stable job market, employer hiring trends suggest that the economy could be heading for a downturn as Trump’s proposed tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada come closer to becoming a reality.
According to CNBC, unemployment for Black men and Asian Americans increased in January, as did the number of people actively looking for work. Although the overall percentage is modest, Black workers unemployment rate overall ticked higher to 6.2% from the 6.1% rate in December 2024, Black men specifically, saw a significant increase.
The rate for Black men in particular climbed to 6.9 percent in January, up over an entire percentage point from December 2024 when it was at 5.6 percent. Black women, meanwhile, remained steady at their 5.4% unemployment rate from December.
Ellie Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, indicated to the outlet that although the numbers for Black men appear concerning, part of the uptick results from a change in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ survey tools.
Those changes include seasonal adjustment factors, like year-end turnover from companies ahead of the beginning of a new fiscal year, an annual benchmark revision to past payroll data, and the inclusion of new data from the U.S. Census that incorporates labor force characteristics.
“I think you would need to see a few months of that elevation, and not just a blip in the data, to think that there was something sinister going on,” Gould remarked to CNBC. Still, Gould noted, “obviously, just the simple fact that it’s so much higher than other groups is a systemic problem in and of itself.”
Another report, this one from CNN, cited a jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Feb. 7, which indicated that the country fell short of its 170,000 jobs estimated to be added in January.
Instead of adding 170,000 jobs, the country only added 143,000 jobs and although the indication from various economists was that the economy is expected to remain stable enough to support a pull back from the Fed’s anti-inflation measures, some companies are beginning to hire as though they are already in a recession.
According to Oliver Allen, a senior U.S. economist at Pantheon Microeconomics, “That leaves us in a situation where things can essentially flip quite quickly, because you’ve already got companies hiring as if they’re in a recession — even if they’re not laying people off.”
As Michelle Holder, an associate professor of economics at John Jay College at the City University of New York, told CNN, Trump’s proposed tariffs could have the effect of eroding historic gains made by Black workers, women, Latinx workers, and other underrepresented workers in the American labor force.
“Tariffs raise prices on goods and services, and when that occurs, people will buy less, and they will spend less,” Holder said. “The data, the trends are pretty crystal clear during economic downturns, during periods when [spending] declines, spending decreases in sectors where Black and Brown people are well represented.”
Holder continued, noting that Black workers in particular, are overrepresented among federal workers, saying that Trump’s cutting of federal workers would be disastrous for them.
“Those groups that were able to participate in the growth in the economy after we were brought back from the brink after the pandemic, I think those times are over. I don’t think that the pictures for those groups get rosier,” Holder said.
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