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Black workers in the middle class are being largely affected by the Trump administration's mass cuts in the federal workforce, NBC News reports.
Prior to President Donald Trump taking office, the federal government was a place for Black workers who are disportionately overlooked in the private sector to find reliable jobs with guardrails in place to offset racial bias in hiring and promotion. Federal jobs have played a key role in helping Black workers thrive in the middle class.
These jobs are now in jeopardy as the Trump administration alongside Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency are slashing the federal workforce. At least 75,000 of the federal government's roughly 3 million employees have accepted buyout offers from the Trump administration and throusands were fired in past several weeks.
Trump is also seeking a complete shut down of the Department of Education, where 30 percent of the employees are Black. 60 of 74 department workers who have been let go so far are Black, according to Sheria Smith, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents the Education Department employees.
“The federal workforce was a means to help build Black middle class. It hired Black Americans at a higher rate than private employers,” Smith said.
In the Department of Health and Human services, which boasts a 20 percent Black population, 1,300 new hires have been laid off. 24 percent of the workers at the Department Veterans Affairs are Black, and the agency has recently lost roughly 1,000 employees.
The data highlights how important federal jobs have been for Black Americans. The administration's efforts are seemingly untangling strides from the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned race discrimination starting from the federal level, Marcus Casey, a fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution, said.
“Whether it was from the post office, through direct growth of federal agencies, through the military — the government fought against the headwinds associated with the private sector,” he added. "And so, the federal government has been essential to the building of the Black middle class.”
The president's sweeping changes to the federal government are "disheartening," Francine Verdine, who worked at the the Internal Revenue Service in Houston for decades, said.
“There’s no humanity in what’s happening right now,” she said. “No organization. It’s just chaos and people being hurt.”
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