‘State Of The Dream 2026’ Reveals Warning Signs Of Black Economic Recession

The report highlights 11 important issues such as Black Employment and Unemployment, entrepreneurship, tax policy, homeownership and the deletions of Black heroes and history.

Is there a Black recession ahead? Data released by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (JCPES) State of the Dream 2026 suggests the possibility.

The report, designed in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, examines economic conditions that faced Black communities in 2025, highlighting 11 important issues such as Black employment and unemployment, entrepreneurship, tax policy, homeownership, and the erasure of Black heroes and history.

President of JCPES Dedrick Asante-Muhammad said the report indicated “that 2025 represented both a regression and a recession for African Americans.”

The reasons: “Rising Black unemployment, the elimination of federal jobs, and the withdrawal of protections and investments that have historically helped Black communities weather economic shocks point to the urgent need for deliberate action to reverse course.”

As 2025 featured a rise in Black unemployment and economic regression under the Trump administration. The unemployment rate sat at 7.5% by December 2025, climbing from 6.2% percent in January, according to The EDU Ledger. If scaled nationally, economic strategists would label it as a recession.

When comparing the prime-age employment rate for Black America in 2025 to 2024,’s the result would be close to 260,000 more people of working age. Unemployment was also reduced at the federal level, with 271,000 positions in the Black workforce being cut in under a year.

Of those jobs, 200,000 belonged to Black women.

Most of the job cuts were a result of the Trump administration’s sweeping termination of DEI programs, including President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 Equal Employment Opportunity executive order.

Tax policies took a huge hit under the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Researchers of the report said it established “permanent tax cuts for high-income and high-wealth households and corporations, reduced investment in poverty-alleviating programs, and left support for working families stagnant or diminished.”

While there were staggering revelations of how 2025 took a toll on Black homeownership and cryptocurrency and digital asset regulation shifts due to the Digital Equity Act being cancelled, what caused real concern for researchers was the systematic removal of mechanisms designed to measure and address racial disparities in the country.

With demographic data disappearing from public databases as a result of federal workforce cuts, it is seemingly impossible to determine whether policy changes produced discriminatory outcomes. “The absence of data is strategic, preventing documentation that would enable accountability,” the report reads.

But all is not lost.

“The question before us is not whether these outcomes are inevitable, but whether we will act—urgently and deliberately—to reverse course before regression hardens into generational loss,” Asante-Muhammad said.

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