Algernon Austin, director of race and economic justice at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has published a new analysis of Black men’s significantly low rate of employment compared to other racial groups in the United States.
In 2025, 79.3 percent of prime-age (25 to 54 years old) Black men were employed. This is roughly 8 to 10 percentage points less than the employment rates of similarly aged Hispanic men (87.2 percent), White men (87.4 percent), and Asian men (88.8 percent). According to Dr. Austin, these figures actually understate the racial disparity in employment, as the calculation does include the incarcerated population, where Black men are significantly overrepresented compared to White men and Black women. Additionally, Dr. Austin notes that Black men are less likely to respond to government surveys, suggesting that jobless Black men are undercounted in official statistics.
While some have argued that lower levels of hard skills and soft skills among Black men could explain the population’s worse labor market outcomes, Dr. Austin notes that this is not the case. Black men do not have the lowest level of educational attainment of all major racial groups. A quarter of Hispanic men do not have a high school diploma, compared to only 9.1 percent of Black men. And Black men also have slightly higher rates of bachelor’s and advanced degrees than Hispanic men, yet Hispanic men’s overall employment rate is nearly 8 percentage points more than Black men’s rate. Furthermore, White and Asian men are notably more likely to be college-educated than Hispanic men, but all three groups have similar overall rates of employment.
As educational attainment increases, so does the employment rate. Black men with an advanced degree have an employment rate that is 40.3 percentage points higher than Black men without a high school diploma (91.6 percent versus 51.2 percent). When compared to White men, Black men have lower rates of employment at every level of education, but the gap does shrink as education increases. Among adults without a high school education, the gap between White and Black men’s employment is 14.3 percentage points. At the advanced degree level, the gap is only 3.1 percentage points. This suggests that increasing Black men’s education will be helpful for improving the group’s employment rate, but it will not be enough to close racial gaps, as the main driver of Black men’s low employment exists in occupations with the lowest hard-skill demands.
Dr. Austin’s research takes a further look at employment-rate disparities among young adults ages 18 to 24 who have not completed a high school diploma. There is little difference in the employment rates between Black and White men in occupations that require moderate to high levels of soft-skills, such as health care support and personal care. However, there are significant disparities among laborer jobs, such as construction occupations, where less educated White men have a large advantage in securing employment compared to their Black counterparts.
To improve Black men’s employment rate, Dr. Austin offers several policy recommendations, including implementing affirmative action in hiring processes to counteract discrimination against Black men, creating national jobs programs that target communities with low employment, and increasing Black men’s educational attainment and professional skills.
Dr. Austin has conducted research and written on issues of race and racial equality for more than 20 years. In addition to Black men’s low rate of employment, he also studies social housing, infrastructure, racial wealth inequality, and other topics at the intersection of race and the economy. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University in Illinois and previously taught sociology at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
