USA/Employment—
Judith Ruiz-Branch, producer, Illinois News Connection, a bureau of Public News Service.
As the Trump administration continues with its priority of dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, thousands of Black women in Illinois and nationwide are losing their jobs.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show the unemployment rate for Black women was at 7.3% at the end of 2025, the highest in four years.
Chiquita Hall-Jackson, an employment and civil rights attorney, believes economic uncertainty and job losses linked to Trump administration orders have hit Black women the hardest.
“Because we are often targeted, we are losing jobs at a (more) rapid rate than our counterparts,” Hall-Jackson asserted. “My clients now, who have longevity and these careers of 20-plus years, cannot even find a job.”
Project 2025 in action
Illinois has already grappled with some of the worst unemployment rates for Black women in the nation. Hall-Jackson said the mass federal layoffs of the past year follow the tactics outlined in Project 2025. This conservative playbook broadly promotes rolling back civil rights protections for women and eliminating DEI programs as unfairly targeting white people.
She noted that Project 2025 also seeks to remove equal employment opportunity protections and dismantle the agencies that enforce antidiscrimination laws. And it promotes the idea of women getting back to “traditional” roles as stay-at-home mothers and wives.
“So many people (are) saying that they didn’t see this happening; this is not the America they know,” Hall-Jackson observed. “But that’s very untrue. One, it’s definitely the America that we know. It’s showing its face. But most importantly, we had a blueprint. We laughed at it; no one took it seriously, and now we’re seeing it in real time, and now it’s becoming scary.”
To survive the next three years, she suggested women who lose their jobs negotiate enhanced severance packages by investigating discriminatory practices. Then, during the new job hunt, invest the severance funds and scale back discretionary spending to build a financial safety net.
