Black Men Face a Worsening Jobs Market: May 2026 Race, Jobs and Economy Update

As the economy roils from the shockwaves of the tariff/trade war of last year and the ongoing and intensifying energy shock from the Iran war, the unemployment rate remains low at 4.3%. 100,000 jobs were added in April, which was the first consecutive month of positive growth since April of 2025. 

Despite the positives in the April jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), closer scrutiny of the data reveals ongoing weaknesses in the labor market. An examination of the employment situation facing Black men helps elucidate these negative trends, including their falling labor force participation rates, sluggish job growth and rising long-term unemployment. 

The BLS defines a worker as unemployed if they have actively looked for a job within the previous four weeks. A more expansive definition of unemployment includes part-time workers who seek but can’t find full-time work and those who want a job but have not actively looked for work because they believe no quality positions exist. The BLS also tracks this expanded definition of unemployment, formerly called the U-6 rate or underemployment rate. 

The chart below shows the underemployment rate by race and sex from 2022 to the present:

The underemployment rate increased throughout the first 3 quarters of 2025, then declined during the 4th quarter of 2025 and during the 1st quarter of 2026. One would assume that more people are moving from underemployment to employment. 

Unfortunately, this assumption is not true for Black men, with the labor force participation rate shown below explaining the reasons behind this trend:

While the number of unemployed Black men declined, so did the number of Black men in the labor force. We can see this in the chart above which shows that their labor force participation rate also declined over this same period. This suggests that, rather than more Black men finding employment, many are simply leaving the labor market entirely.

Given that these were working-age men, one could assume they are not leaving the labor force due to retirement but rather due to feelings of discouragement or an inability to find work. In fact, the number of employed Black men over 20 years old has declined by roughly 650,000 since November 2025.

This pattern of declining labor force participation and underemployment is unique among Black men. The labor force participation rate for all other groups held constant or increased, while the Black male labor force participation rate declined over 2025 and early 2026.

One explanation for why increasing numbers of working age Black men are leaving the labor force could be that their largest sectoral employer, logistics, is experiencing a multi-year slump. Due to changes in freight demand, tariffs and rising costs, the logistics sector has seen virtually no job growth since the summer of 2022. Furthermore, just one year since President Trump announced his tariff/trade war, the transportation and warehousing sector has lost almost 90,000 jobs, including 22,000 truck drivers and 50,000 warehouse positions.

These job losses will only worsen as the energy crunch from the Iran war continues to spike fuel prices globally. The jet fuel shortage has already led to the closure of Spirit Airlines. The transportation sector will experience more job losses and bankruptcies if the situation doesn’t change, with many of the losses impacting Black men. 

One area where these job losses are showing up is in the rise of the long-term unemployed as shown in the chart below: 

The share of the unemployed who have been jobless for longer than 27 weeks is now over 26% and continues to rise as illustrated by the chart above. This has pushed the average number of weeks people are unemployed to roughly 25 weeks. Among the number of unemployed Black men, 30% have been jobless for longer than 27 weeks, the highest of any racial/ethnic group.

The employment situation of Black men highlights several growing issues facing workers overall, such as rising long-term unemployment rates and heavy job losses across multiple sectors. While policies that uplift Black men specifically have become politically toxic, measures like ending the tariff/trade war and expanding unemployment benefits (which was done during the COVID-19 pandemic) can help all workers, including Black men.

Joseph Dean is the Racial Economic Research Specialist with NCRC’s Research team.

Photo credit: Mukhtar Stuaib Mukhtar via Pexels.