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A TALE OF 10 CITIES  
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Valerie Wilson, Adewale A. Maye, Stevie Marvin
August 18, 2025
Economic Policy Institute
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_ Metro areas signal what’s at stake for Black Americans under
Trump’s anti-equity agenda _

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SUMMARY:

* From 1916–1970, 6 million Black Americans fled the violence and
economic oppression of the rural South. Among the legacies of this
Great Migration is the concentration of Black Americans in urban
areas.
* Today, 10 metro areas—New York, Atlanta, D.C., Chicago, Dallas,
Houston, Philadelphia, Miami, Los Angeles, and Detroit—have the
largest Black populations in the country and are home to 38.6% of the
Black labor force.
* This analysis finds evidence of relative economic prosperity and
hardship across and within these 10 metro areas, demonstrating huge
stakes associated with federal budget and job cuts, anti-equity
backlash, and growing concerns of a self-inflicted recession.
* Since taking office, Trump has pushed an anti-equity agenda that
rolls back the clock on hard-won federal policies establishing equal
employment and core labor standards and protections for Black workers.
The passage of those laws was pivotal in expanding rights and
opportunities sought across the decades of the Great Migration and
Civil Rights Movement.

* Mass firings of federal employees and budget cuts will have harmful
consequences for Black Americans across class lines.

* Given the large share of the state’s federal workers in metro
Atlanta (51% of GA total), D.C. (60% of combined D.C., MD, VA & WV
total) and New York (63% of combined NY & NJ total), Trump’s attack
on the public sector threatens what has historically been a pathway to
better, more equitable jobs for Black Americans—thanks to robust
anti-discrimination policies and public-sector collective bargaining.
* Although these cities anchor metro areas with some of the highest
Black median household incomes in the nation, federal grant funds
provide critical support to under-resourced inner-city communities.
Many of those federal investments in low-income and working-class
communities were cut in the Republican-led budget reconciliation bill.

* In addition to his attacks on equity and workers’ rights,
Trump’s policy path leads straight to recession—jeopardizing Black
workers’ labor market gains in recent years, including historically
low unemployment and faster wage growth.
* Based on 2023 estimates from the American Community Survey, metro
area Black unemployment was lower than the Black national average in
Atlanta, D.C., Dallas, Miami, and Philadelphia.
* While overall real median household income declined 1.1% between
2019 and 2023, Black median household income grew by 2.8%.
* In 2023, Black median household income exceeded the national
median of $53,927 in all but two (Chicago and Detroit) of the metros
observed. It was highest in the D.C. ($89,912) and Atlanta ($70,969)
metro areas.
* In the face of federal rollbacks of civil and worker’s rights
and growing concerns about recession, state and local governments
should act to maintain and strengthen basic protections, like minimum
wage and unemployment insurance, while continuing local efforts to
advance racial equity and justice. However, local leaders in red
states, like Florida and Texas, face state-imposed obstacles to
passing progressive economic and racial justice policies. 

The concentration of Black Americans in urban areas is one of the
legacies of the Great Migration—the period between 1916 and 1970
when 6 million Black Americans fled the violence and economic
oppression of the rural South in search of safety and better job
opportunities in cities throughout the Northeast, Midwest, and West.
But even in non-Southern U.S. cities, many continued to face poor
working conditions as well as employment and pay discrimination,
leaving them just marginally better off than in the places they fled.
Rather, significant gains in economic status only became possible
through sweeping changes to federal labor and civil rights laws born
from years of protest and political pressure during the decades of the
Great Migration and beyond. While landmark federal labor laws passed
during the 1930s improved working conditions for most white workers,
many Black workers were initially excluded from the right to organize
unions under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, or minimum wage
and overtime pay protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act of
1938. The steady demand for equal protection under these and other
laws led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting
segregation at all places of public accommodation and discrimination
by employers and labor unions based on race, color, religion, or
national origin. These federal labor and civil rights laws set a
national standard for fair working conditions and equal treatment that
some state and local governments have enhanced to varying degrees
based on local political and economic conditions. In many cities with
large Black populations, policy decisions and local economic
conditions yield both positive and negative results for Black
Americans.

The diverse experiences of Black people across metro areas1
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the notion that Black America is not a monolith. The unique political
and economic dynamics in each place produce relative economic
prosperity and hardship that make up the collective economic
experience of Black Americans. However, even areas once sought as
places of refuge and economic opportunity are now contending with a
president whose actions undermine federal laws establishing equal
employment and other civil rights, as well as core labor standards and
protections.

Since taking office, Trump has pushed a revisionist version of history
that erases any acknowledgement of the racism, violence, and
oppression that created persistent racial inequities and forever
changed the demographic composition of U.S. cities. This includes
issuing a barrage of executive orders that roll back the clock on
hard-won federal policies that have helped Black Americans attain many
of the opportunities sought through the Great Migration and Civil
Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, Trump’s
anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) rhetoric centers white men
as the primary victims of discrimination and calls into question the
“merit” or qualifications of almost anyone else. He has used those
false narratives to justify eliminating the use of disparate impact
liability and redirecting enforcement priorities at the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission and Office of Federal Contract
Compliance Programs—severely weakening the two agencies responsible
for making sure employers comply with anti-discrimination law.
Trump’s anti-equity agenda—along with efforts to decimate the
federal workforce, cut services and programs that working families and
low-income communities rely on, and attacks on labor standards and
workers’ union and collective bargaining rights—are just some of
the many harmful actions that hurt workers and put the economy at risk
(McNicholas et al. 2025).

As a benchmark for assessing what’s at stake under Trump’s harmful
economic policies and anti-equity agenda, we explore economic
conditions for Black Americans in 10 U.S. metro areas with the largest
Black populations. This list includes nine of the country’s largest
metros overall—anchored by the principal cities of New York,
Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia,
Miami, and Los Angeles—as well as Detroit. Today, these 10 metro
areas, including four in Southern states, are home to 38.6% of the
Black labor force and 26.9% of the total labor force. Each of these
metro areas account for at least one-third of their respective
state’s Black labor force. Additionally, Black Americans are the
largest demographic group in the principal cities of Detroit (75.9%),
Atlanta (46.4%), Washington, D.C. (40.9%), and Philadelphia (39.5%)
and represent over one-fifth of the population in all but Los Angeles
(8.5%) and Miami (14.1%).

We examine unemployment rates, median household income, the size of
the federal workforce, and federal grant dollars awarded to these
places in 2023. Our analysis compares economic outcomes for Black
Americans across metro areas and relative to national and state
averages and considers some of the factors contributing to those
differences. This cross-metro analysis allows us to go beyond a simple
categorization of economic conditions as good versus bad or equal
versus unequal. Instead, it raises important questions about why
conditions are better in some places and worse in others. Finally, we
explore the potential for state and local policy to provide a buffer
against damaging federal actions that increase the risk of recession,
harm workers, and exacerbate racial inequities.

Metro area unemployment rates and income reveal relative economic
prosperity and hardship among Black Americans

The chaotic and harmful actions of the second Trump administration
have raised the risk of recession for the otherwise strong and
resilient labor market Trump inherited. One of the greatest casualties
of a completely self-inflicted recession would be the labor market
gains experienced by Black workers in recent years, including
historically low unemployment and faster wage growth (Cid-Martinez,
Maye, and Marvin 2025).

According to official estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS), the average annual Black unemployment rate in 2023 was a record
low (5.5%), compared with an overall national unemployment rate of
3.6%. This analysis compares estimates of national, metro, principal
city, and state unemployment rates for Black workers using data from
the American Community Survey (ACS). ACS provides better coverage of
metro area and principal city Black unemployment rates, but 2023
national estimates are higher than those reported by BLS due to
differences in the survey reference periods.2
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As shown in FIGURE A, in 2023, five of the 10 metro
areas—Washington, D.C., Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, and
Philadelphia—each outperformed the ACS-estimated national average of
7.2% for Black Americans. Across all 10 metro areas, Black
unemployment ranged from a low of 5.6% in metro Atlanta to a high of
10.4% in the Chicago metro area.

FIGURE B reveals that metro area Black median household income
exceeded the national median of $53,927 in all but two of the metros
observed. The exceptions were the Midwestern metro areas of Chicago
and Detroit—the same places where Black unemployment was highest in
2023. Although incomes of Black residents in metro Chicago and Detroit
were lower relative to the national median and other metros, their
incomes were higher than the median Black household in the states of
Illinois and Michigan. Median Black household incomes in those states
were also the lowest among the states observed for this analysis.

At the opposite end of the scale, Black median household income was
highest in the D.C. ($89,912) and Atlanta ($70,969) metro areas.
Notably, metro D.C.’s Black median household income was also
significantly higher than the overall national median of $77,719.
Black households in the New York ($65,758) and Dallas ($63,376) metro
areas also had substantially higher median incomes than the typical
Black household nationwide.

Relatively higher incomes and lower unemployment in metro D.C. and
Atlanta are consistent with the fact that these places also had the
largest shares of highly educated Black workers. The share of Black
college graduates in the D.C. (40.8%) and Atlanta (36.2%) metro areas
is well above the share of Black college graduates nationally (26.2%)
and at least as high as the share of all college graduates nationwide.
In contrast, the Detroit metro area had the lowest share of Black
college graduates (20.8%). As we will discuss later, the high
concentration of federal employment and related professional job
opportunities in metro D.C. is a likely factor in attracting Black
college graduates to the area.

The strength of the 2023 labor market and rise in employment among
Black Americans also contributed to the growth in median Black
household income. As shown in FIGURE C, while overall real median
household income declined 1.1% between 2019 and 2023, Black median
household income grew by 2.8%. The spike in inflation during this
period generally muted real income growth; however, increased
employment of Black workers managed to counteract the negative impact
of inflation on income (Moore and Maye 2023). Black median income
growth also outpaced total income growth in six of the 10 observed
metro areas—Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and
Dallas. In places where real incomes declined, the decline was smaller
among Black Americans.

Echoes of the Great Migration

Across all the observed metro areas, there is a clear distinction in
the average economic status of Black Americans in the principal city
compared with the broader metro area, which includes surrounding
suburbs. We characterize these consistent place-based differences as
echoes of the Great Migration. One of the factors contributing to
these differences was “white flight”—the mass relocation of
white people from urban centers to suburbs in response to the rising
Black population in cities during the Great Migration. More than just
a demographic shift, white flight initiated a draining of economic
resources away from cities that continued as more affluent Black
families moved to suburbs following the passage and enforcement of
fair housing laws.

Across all 10 metro areas, Black unemployment was higher in principal
cities compared with the broader metropolitan statistical area (MSA)
and the state. Referring again to Figure A, in 2023, Black
unemployment in the city of Atlanta (8.4%) was 2.8 percentage points
higher than metro Atlanta where Black unemployment was lowest and
closest to the overall national average. Similarly, the Black
unemployment rate was more than 3 percentage points higher in the
cities of Washington, D.C. (9.9%) and Miami (9.7%), relative to the
respective metro areas. In Chicago (12.3%) and Detroit (11.7%), Black
unemployment was nearly 2 percentage points above metro area rates
that were already at least 2 percentage points above the Black
national average. Recession-level Black unemployment rates in the
Midwestern cities of Chicago and Detroit are also reflected at the
state level for Illinois and Michigan. For Detroit, in particular, a
second wave of white flight followed the post-1980s decline in
manufacturing jobs and union density, once critical sources of Black
economic mobility in the region (Scott et al. 2022). 

Similarly, Black median household income was substantially lower in
principal cities than the metro area and the state. Figure B shows
that across all 10 metro areas, Black median household income was at
least $6,400 lower in the principal city than in the metro area. The
largest gap was in the D.C. metro area, where there was a difference
of nearly $30,000 between Black median household income in the
principal city of Washington, D.C., and the broader metro area. In
other metro areas with relatively high Black median incomes, like
metro Atlanta and Dallas, the difference was $17,066 and $14,849,
respectively. However, even in the Detroit metro area where Black
incomes were lowest, there was a gap of more than $10,000 between
households in the principal city and those in the broader metro area.

Federal grants are critical to filling resource gaps in urban areas

Federal grants are critical to filling the resource gaps in principal
cities since those funds are often directed toward poorly resourced
communities. TABLE 1 provides a summary of federal grant dollars
flowing to each city in recent years based on data available at
USAspending.gov.3
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grant amounts include funds from block, formula, project, and
cooperative agreement grant obligations, and encompass
COVID-19-related obligations from the American Recovery Plan Act.

As shown in Table 1, D.C. and New York received the most in federal
grant funds (an annual average of more than $6 billion each over
fiscal years 2022–2024) followed by Atlanta. However, when adjusted
for population size, D.C. and Atlanta had the highest per capita
averages ($9,158 and $6,769 per person, respectively).

Although these cities anchor metro areas with some of the highest
Black median household incomes in the nation, federal grant funds are
directed toward the needs of less advantaged residents. For example,
over the last three years, Atlanta’s largest federal grants were
from the Department of Education to support students from low-income
families in Title I schools. The largest federal grants to Washington,
D.C., were from the Environmental Protection Agency, authorized
through the Inflation Reduction Act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
and other pollutants and to bring green projects to low-income and
disadvantaged communities. Most of the federal grant dollars going to
the city of New York were from the Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) to support public housing.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was a major source
of federal grants awarded in nine of the 10 cities. While the agency
is most often associated with Medicaid funding for states, HHS funds
programs like Head Start, HIV emergency relief, cancer treatment, and
children’s hospitals at the city level. Across all 10 cities, the
Departments of HHS, HUD, and Transportation were commonly among the
top three awarding agencies, representing critical investments in
health and well-being, housing, and transportation infrastructure in
urban areas.

However, due to the upside-down priorities of the current Congress,
many federal investments in low-income and working-class communities
have been cut to give tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the
wealthy. In July 2025, Congress passed the Republican-led Budget
Reconciliation Bill (or H.R. 1) which guts Medicaid and slashes the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), while also
eliminating clean energy tax credits established under the Inflation
Reduction Act, potentially putting over half a million jobs at risk
(Seeburger et al. 2025). The bill results in 16 million fewer people
having health coverage through 2034 and places approximately 11
million individuals at risk of losing SNAP benefits. Medicaid cuts
alone could depress local spending enough to force the loss of 850,000
jobs (Bivens 2025). Overall, the Congressional Budget Office estimates
that annual income for households in the lowest decile would decline
by about $1,600—highlighting the devastating impact this bill will
have on vulnerable families and the added strain it would place on
state and local budgets (CBO 2025).

The city of Washington, D.C., was placed in a uniquely precarious
position when the House’s reconciliation bill reverted D.C. to its
2024 budget. That decision slashed the city’s 2025 budget by more
than $1 billion, an impossible deficit to close without laying off
many city employees and severely cutting public programs and
services. At of the time of this report’s publication, the House
had yet to vote on an unanimously passed Senate fix that would reverse
the budget cuts, needlessly placing the city’s budget in limbo. In
response to House’s inaction, the mayor of D.C. proposed a 2025
supplemental budget that cuts services and freezes hiring to cover the
budget gap while avoiding layoffs. Combined with federal job cuts,
these actions represent a major blow to the area’s economic base and
fiscal autonomy that would be especially tragic for Black Americans
across class lines in the D.C. metro area.

Federal jobs cuts threaten relative economic security for the Black
middle class

For Black Americans, public-sector employment has historically been a
pathway to better, more equitable job opportunities. Through executive
actions and legislation introduced in the 1960s and 1970s, the federal
government once led in adopting anti-discrimination and affirmative
action practices that increased the number of Black workers in the
federal government. In the decades that followed, federal jobs have
provided stable employment, excellent benefits, and opportunities for
career advancement that supported a robust Black middle class.
Public-sector collective bargaining has also helped to maintain the
quality of these jobs through labor contracts that foster transparency
through clearly defined policies and pay structures. This plays a
critical role in reducing discrimination and providing workers with
critical protections and recourse against other forms of exploitation
or mistreatment.

That history stands in sharp contrast to the Trump administration’s
efforts to dismantle the public sector, beginning with workers in DEI
departments within federal agencies. Trump’s attacks on the federal
workforce also include attempts to limit the approval of collective
bargaining agreements with federal workers. The targets of such
actions include skilled and often highly educated Black workers who
typically experience less employment volatility, even during economic
downturns. Nationally, Black federal workers average 12.3 years of
service and 45.3% hold at least a bachelor’s degree (compared with
26.2% overall) (Maye and Marvin 2025).

While federal jobs losses will obviously have an impact in the D.C.
metro area, over 90% of federal workers are employed outside the
nation’s capital (McNicholas and Oakford 2025). The ripple effects
from large-scale job cuts are expected to show up in higher
unemployment and the disruption of critical public services and
government functions throughout the nation. TABLE 2 shows the number
of federal workers who live in each of the 10 metro areas, as well as
the metro’s share of total federal jobs in the state. For metro
areas that cross state lines, including metro D.C., Chicago, New York,
and Philadelphia, we calculate metro area jobs as a share of the
combined state totals. Over 300,000 federal workers reside in the D.C.
metro area, accounting for 60% of all federal workers in the District
of Columbia and surrounding states of Virginia, Maryland, and West
Virginia. The second largest number of federal workers (over 100,000)
are in the New York metro area, representing 63% of all federal
workers in New York and New Jersey. Among the single state metro
areas, Atlanta is home to over half (51%) of Georgia’s federal
workforce and 47% of Michigan’s federal workers are in metro
Detroit.

While metro-level federal employment numbers by race are unavailable,
EPI analysis of state-level data from the Office of Personnel
Management (OPM) reveals that 43.8% of Georgia’s federal workers are
Black—the largest share in the country (Wilson 2025). The District
of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia each have larger numbers of
federal workers than Georgia, and Black workers are just over
one-fourth of the federal workforce in each those states—28.8% in
D.C., 27.9% in Maryland, and 26% in Virginia.

Between January and July of 2025, BLS reported a loss of 84,000 net
federal jobs but the full impact and consequences of those job losses
are yet to be revealed. Though thousands of fired federal workers were
reinstated by court orders in February 2025, the Supreme Court later
sided with the Trump administration when it lifted a lower court’s
block on mass federal layoffs, clearing the way for the Trump
administration to proceed with planned large-scale cuts to the federal
workforce. However, DOGE’s lack of transparency and the Trump
administration’s broader data erasure efforts make it difficult to
keep track of whether job cuts fall disproportionately on certain
groups of workers.4
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TROUBLING CHANGES AT THE EEOC STIFLE EQUITY AND WOULD BE HARMFUL TO
ECONOMIC GROWTH

As a large independent federal agency, the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is relatively small compared with many
cabinet level agencies experiencing job cuts. Headquartered in
Washington, D.C., the EEOC operates 53 district and field offices
across the country,5
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locations in each of our 10 featured cities with large Black
populations. For 60 years, the EEOC has been integral to the
enforcement of U.S. anti-discrimination laws—efforts that helped
reduce employment discrimination and boost average living standards by
an estimated $493 to $1,233 per person since 1960 (Maye and Wilson
2025). However, troubling changes to the structure and priorities of
the agency paralyze some of the commission’s key functions and
weaken enforcement against racial and gender discrimination—the most
common types of discrimination claims filed (Mark, Gurley, and Rein
2025).

Instead, the Trump administration has redirected the EEOC’s
priorities to focus more on investigating so-called DEI-motivated race
and sex discrimination and anti-American national origin bias and
discrimination (DOJ 2025; EEOC 2025). Trump also issued an executive
order designed to end the use of disparate impact liability, a legal
standard that works to prevent otherwise “race-neutral” policies
and practices from perpetuating racial inequities (EPI 2025b). This
restructuring of priorities threatens to turn the mission of the EEOC
on its head by framing equity efforts intended to remedy decades of
documented employment discrimination as discriminatory.

Just as the presence of EEOC offices in these cities signaled the
federal government’s nationwide vigilance over employment
discrimination, efforts to undermine the agency signal that employment
discrimination—particularly against racial, ethnic, sexual, or
religious minorities—will go unchecked. The impact of those changes
extends beyond the millions of Black Americans working in and around
these 10 cities alone and erodes workplace equity writ large.

State and local policy levers

As the Trump administration pushes the federal government toward a
more anti-worker and anti-equity stance, decisions made by state and
local policymakers will determine what kinds of protections workers in
their states and cities will retain. TABLE 3 presents a sample of
state and local policy positions related to workers’ rights for the
ten metro areas featured in this analysis. These positions represent
the relative progressivity of those state and local governments which
could indicate their propensity to provide some buffer against harmful
federal actions that raise the risk of recession, weaken labor
standards, and exacerbate racial inequities. These policies include
unemployment insurance (UI), minimum wage, paid leave, state
preemption of local minimum wage or paid leave policies, and
right-to-work laws. As a measure of the likelihood that state and
local leaders will fight to maintain or strengthen equity efforts, we
also include the number of Black mayors elected in each city and the
existence of state or local reparations initiatives.

A basic scan of state and local policies reveals that while there is
some variation in the generosity of UI benefits across states, the
need for expanded federal support will once again be essential for
recovery from the next recession. The scan also shows that local
leaders in red states face state-imposed obstacles to passing
progressive economic and racial justice policies.  

Unemployment insurance

Unemployment insurance benefits are among the
most _efficient_ sources of support to families and the economy
during a recession. Since they are targeted at individuals whose
income falls due to a job loss, UI benefits provide direct income
support to eligible unemployed workers while also helping to stabilize
aggregate demand, the largest driver of economic growth. Estimates
suggest that each dollar in UI benefits can generate nearly $2 in
local spending (Evermore 2024). Despite the efficiency of UI benefits,
they are often the target of austerity politics fueled by exaggerated
and frequently debunked claims that overly generous benefits suppress
employment (Martinez Hickey and Cooper 2021). 

While adequate federal action and support for expanding UI during a
recession are critical to a quick recovery, state policymakers have
some flexibility in determining how their UI programs are structured
and resisting the austerity impulse. As a joint state and federal
program, each state can adjust its own eligibility requirements,
length of time for available benefits, and maximum weekly benefits in
coordination with federal guidelines. Among the states represented in
Table 3, Florida and Michigan are the only two that currently cap the
number of weeks benefits can be received at less than 26 weeks.
However, the maximum weekly benefit for unemployed individuals varies
from a high of $605 per week in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) to a low
of $365 per week in Georgia (Atlanta).

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the potential for major federal reforms
to boost UI as a macroeconomic stabilizer by enhancing the duration,
generosity, and eligibility of UI benefits (Bivens and Banerjee 2021).
The pandemic also exposed administrative and fiscal inadequacies in
state UI systems. Federal funds were allocated by the American Rescue
Plan Act (ARPA) to improve UI systems administration, prevent fraud,
and increase equitable access (DOL n.d.). However, few states took
steps to strengthen severely underfunded state UI systems long term by
increasing their taxable wage base (Sawo and Sherer 2022). UI reform
advocates recommend increasing the taxable wage base to half of the
taxable maximum for Social Security (Bivens et al. 2021). The increase
would result in employers paying state unemployment taxes on a larger
percentage of higher wage earners’ pay, generating more revenue and
sustaining more fairness, equity, and administrative efficiency over
time. Among the states considered, only New York and Illinois have a
taxable wage base above $10,000, but still far below the much higher
recommended base of $88,500 needed to address underfunding.6
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In red states, a city’s ability to enact pro-worker policies is
often at the mercy of state preemption

Several states and localities across the country have established
minimum wage ordinances that exceed the federal standard. Since the
federal minimum wage has remained stuck at $7.25 for over 15 years,
failing to keep up with rising costs and inflation, this is a critical
policy lever for supporting workers and their families’ right to a
livable wage (Payne-Patterson and Maye 2023). Rasing the minimum wage
supports all workers, but especially Black workers who are
overrepresented in low-wage occupations.

Currently, 19 states and Washington, D.C., have passed laws raising
their own minimum wage to at least $15 an hour by 2027, including
several cities listed in Table 3 with local minimum wages well above
the federal minimum (Hickey 2024; EPI 2025a). Washington, D.C., New
York, Los Angeles, and Chicago all have a minimum wage standard of at
least $15 an hour and Detroit’s minimum wage increased to $12.48 in
2025.

Sadly, four cities with large Black populations—Atlanta, Dallas,
Houston, and Philadelphia—have not raised their minimum wage above
the federal level. In June, the Pennsylvania state House passed a bill
that would raise Philadelphia’s minimum wage to $15 an hour after
years of failed attempts to increase the state’s minimum wage to
that level (Huangpu 2025). The House proposal now awaits approval by
the state Senate. For relatively progressive cities that also happen
to be in red states, state preemption laws are a major barrier to
passing a higher local minimum wage. In Atlanta, workers not covered
by the Fair Labor Standards Act are paid a minimum of $5.15 an
hour—$2.10 below the already insufficient federal minimum wage (GDOL
n.d.). While local governments are prohibited in establishing a higher
city-wide minimum wage, Dallas, Houston, and Atlanta have each passed
increases for city, county, or contract workers (Cooper 2024; Barrera
and Heilman 2025). Apart from preemption, right-to-work laws in these
states also present barriers that limit workers’ collective
bargaining rights, resulting in lower wages and benefits for all
workers.

While raising the minimum wage can raise living standards for low-wage
hourly workers, paid family leave enables workers to avoid the
difficult tradeoff between income stability and caring for family.
There is no federal law that guarantees paid family or medical leave
to workers; up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave are available to eligible
employees under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). However, as
of 2025, 13 states and Washington, D.C., have passed their own paid
family leave laws (Williamson 2024). Of the states listed in Table 3,
only California, New York, and the District of Columbia currently have
paid leave policies on the books. In D.C. and New York, eligible
employees receive up to 12 weeks of paid leave (DCPFL n.d., NYSPFL
n.d.). In California, eligible employees receive up to eight weeks of
paid time off (EDD n.d.). All three policies allow workers to use this
leave for caring for a loved one, bonding with a child, or military
assistance. In New York, employees taking paid family leave receive
67% of their average weekly wage, while in California, workers can
receive about 70–90% of wages earned five to 18 months before the
claim start date. D.C. Paid Family Leave provides wage replacement of
90% of wages up to 1.5 times D.C.’s minimum wage and 50% of wages
above 1.5 times D.C.’s minimum wage (DCPFL n.d.).

Will local steps toward racial reckoning withstand the rising tide of
federal and state anti-equity backlash?

Every city and town in the United States has its own complicated
racial history to reckon with. That history is infused in local policy
and politics and shapes social and economic outcomes. As is true at
the national level, decisions made by local elected leaders can either
widen or narrow racial disparities. Leadership also reflects and sets
the tone for how a city acknowledges, confronts, and seeks to resolve
current and historic racial injustice. As measures of perceived racial
progressivity, we consider the number of Black mayors elected in the
principal city for each metro area and whether any local reparations
initiatives have been introduced since 2020. While these are
admittedly imperfect metrics, we interpret them as signals of the
local political will to advance racial equity and defend current
efforts. However, it is uncertain how much local efforts will be
jeopardized by legal challenges triggered by aggressive federal and
state anti-equity policies.

Table 3 shows that among the 10 cities observed, all except Miami have
elected at least two Black mayors. The cities with the longest history
of Black leadership are Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, having had
seven and six Black mayors, respectively. Five Black Americans have
served as mayor of Detroit. Since Black Americans are the largest
demographic group in each of these cities, the larger number of Black
mayors elected in these cities reflects city demographics and perhaps
the degree of influence Black Americans wield in local elections. A
more comprehensive analysis of city management and the policy
priorities of individual mayors would be needed to assess their direct
impact on Black economic outcomes or racial equity.

While little progress has been made to advance the issue of
reparations at the federal level, since 2020, several state and local
governments have taken initiative in addressing their own histories of
racial and economic injustice against Black Americans. Reparations
initiatives exist in all except the three cities in red states whose
governors have aggressively pushed anti-DEI legislation: Miami in
Florida, and Dallas and Houston in Texas. In most places where a
reparations initiative exists, activity has been at the city or county
level. However, both city- and state-level initiatives exist in
California and New York. Current state and local reparations efforts
range from the appointment of a task force to study the issue, to
exploring plan options, approving legislation, and implementing a
plan. While there are open questions about whether local plans are
truly reparative or will have any measurable economic effect on
closing the racial wealth gap, they are at least a signal of
willingness to confront and seriously consider government
accountability for eliminating racial inequities (Moore 2023).7
[[link removed]]

Conclusion

The strong and stable economy Trump inherited withstood months of his
administration’s harmful and chaotic policy actions before clear
signs of a softening labor market became evident in the July jobs
report. Large downward revisions to May and June payroll employment
estimates signaled a weaker labor market than originally reported,
bringing average three-month job growth down to just 35,000 net new
jobs compared with 127,000 over the preceding three months. Rather
than taking this sobering news as a sign that he should reconsider the
current policy path, Trump misrepresented the news as a politically
motivated personal attack and fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer.
Such careless actions unjustifiably erode confidence in one of the
world’s most respected statistical agencies and endangers sound
economic decision-making.

If the Trump administration and Congress continue along the current
path, there is a very real risk of a recession in the coming
months—and a lot at stake for Black Americans who typically suffer
higher rates of unemployment and take longer to recover lost jobs and
income from a downturn. In recent years there have been economic gains
that should be protected and expanded. Five metro areas in this
analysis had Black unemployment rates below the national average in
2023 and the median Black household income was above the national
median in eight metros. At the same time, there is evidence of
persistent inequities and economic hardship that demand a commitment
to long-term solutions and investment in underserved communities. Two
metro areas were below national measures of Black unemployment and
income, but across all 10 metro areas, principal city residents had
higher unemployment and lower incomes compared with the broader metro
area which includes surrounding suburbs. Trump’s anti-equity,
anti-worker agenda undermines both of those objectives by decimating
the federal workforce and attacking public sector unions; cutting the
federal budget for Medicaid, SNAP, and other programs that benefit
low-income families; weaponizing civil rights enforcement to
discourage diversity, equity and inclusion; and weakening core labor
standards and protections.

State and local governments have some policy levers at their disposal
for improving worker protections, but the effect those policies can
have on the economic well-being of Black Americans varies by place,
and in some cases is conditional on federal or state actions. For
example, while cities and states have some capacity to increase their
minimum wage or pass paid leave policies, preemption is a major
barrier for local leaders seeking to pursue more progressive policies
in red states. The law allows states some flexibility to adjust the
duration and amount of unemployment insurance benefits, one of the
most efficient sources of income support during a recession. Yet
severe underfunding of state systems due to a far too low state
taxable wage base starves their capacity to make substantial
improvements in the fairness, equity, or generosity of benefits
without federal funding. Moreover, in a recession, there is little any
state can do to expand benefits and speed recovery without increased
federal support—a step we can’t assume to be a priority of the
current Congress or president. Finally, while many of cities we
observe could be considered more racially progressive than the country
as a whole, federally led anti-DEI backlash raises the possibility of
legal challenges against local policies in support of equity and
racial justice.

Black America is not a monolith. That statement is an assertion of the
right to self-determination and individual expression that racism
denies Black Americans. It is also a reflection of the varied
experiences shaped by differences in local policy, economic
conditions, political influence, and culture. Still, history shows
that the pursuit of collective freedom, justice, and equity for Black
Americans has always required decisive national actions that raise the
standards for fair and equal treatment of all people in this country.
The Trump administration’s denial of that history and lowering of
those standards is not just several steps backwards for Black
Americans, but moves all of the United States in the wrong direction.

Notes

1. 
[[link removed]]A
metro area is a region that includes a principal city and surrounding
cities and towns with economic and social ties to the urban core.

2. 
[[link removed]]The
labor market statistics produced by BLS are based on data collected in
the Current Population Survey (CPS). CPS interviews are conducted in a
single designated week each month and annual averages align with the
calendar year, whereas respondents answer the ACS at times that vary
throughout the month and year and annual figures are averaged over the
prior 12 months.

3. 
[[link removed]]USAspending.gov
is the official open data source of federal spending information,
including information about federal awards such as contracts, grants,
and loans. Since annual grant totals can change as data are updated on
a rolling basis, we use a three-year average to minimize the sometimes
substantial effect updates can have on a single year’s grant total.
A downloaded transaction summary as it existed at the time of our
analysis is available upon request.

4. 
[[link removed]]The
OPM data used to report the share of Black federal workers are no
longer publicly available.

5. 
[[link removed]]Workers
can call or visit EEOC field offices to ask questions about potential
employment discrimination or to directly file an individual complaint.
Field offices may also recommend charges for EEOC Commissioners to
pursue against specific employers.

6. 
[[link removed]]The
$88,500 corresponds to half of the 2025 taxable wage limit for Social
Security, which was $176,100, up from $168,600 in 2024.

7. 
[[link removed]]In
May 2025, FirstRepair and Decolonizing Wealth Project launched a
mapping tool that documents state and local reparations initiatives
across the United States. See: FirstRepair and Decolonizing Wealth
Project, “Mapping the U.S. Reparations Movement” (web
page), [link removed].

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See related work on Public Investment
[[link removed]] | Unemployment
[[link removed]] | Public-sector workers
[[link removed]] | Wages,
Incomes, and Wealth
[[link removed]] | Black
Americans [[link removed]]

See more work by Valerie Wilson
[[link removed]], Adewale A. Maye
[[link removed]], and Stevie Marvin
[[link removed]]

VALERIE RAWLSTON WILSON (she/her) is a labor economist and Director of
the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the
Economy (PREE), a nationally recognized source for expert reports and
policy analyses on the economic condition of America’s people of
color. As PREE Director, Wilson has worked to elevate EPI’s thought
leadership on issues of racial and economic justice and expand
PREE’s capacity to prescribe policy solutions that center racial
equity. Prior to joining EPI, Wilson served as Vice President of
Research at the National Urban League, where she played a pivotal role
in the production of the organization’s annual signature
publication, _The State of Black America, _and assisting the
historic civil rights organization in shaping its national economic
policy.   In 2022, she was President of the National Economics
Association, an organization founded to promote the professional lives
of black economists while expanding knowledge of economic issues of
particular interest to communities of color. In 2023, she was elected
to become a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
 

Throughout her career, Wilson has written extensively on various
issues impacting racial economic inequality in the United
States—including employment, wage, income and wealth
disparities—and has also appeared in major print, television, and
radio media.  Wilson has testified before Congress on racial
disparities in unemployment and earnings and was keynote speaker for
the regional Federal Reserve Banks’ series on Racism and the
Economy: Focus on Employment.  She has twice served on National
Academies panels charged with proposing ways to improve the EEOC’s
ability to measure and collect pay information from U.S. employers in
support of the agency’s responsibility to investigate charges of pay
discrimination. In 2010, through the State Department’s Bureau of
International Information Programs, she was selected to deliver the
keynote address at an event on Minority Economic Empowerment at the
Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway.

_EDUCATION_
Ph.D., Economics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

ADEWALE A. MAYE is a policy and research analyst with the Economic
Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy. He
studies the root causes of racial economic inequality in order to
advance inclusive and restorative policy solutions that build equity.
His research interests are centered at the intersection of labor
economics, the political economy, and inequality. 

Prior to joining EPI, Adewale was a policy analyst with the Center for
Law and Social Policy (CLASP), where he focused on expanding
workers’ rights on issues including paid leave, paid sick days, and
fair scheduling, as well as advocating for broader economic justice
initiatives that impact marginalized communities, such as student loan
debt cancellation and labor standards enforcement.

_EDUCATION_

M.S., Applied Economics and Data Science, The George Washington
University
B.A., Economics, University of Maryland, College Park

STEVIE MARVIN (they/them) is a research assistant with the Economic
Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy
(PREE). Marvin joined EPI in January 2023 after completing their
undergraduate degree at American University. They support the PREE
team through data collection, analysis, and visualization for articles
and blog posts.

EDUCATION
B.A., Economics, American University

ABOUT EPI. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is a nonprofit,
nonpartisan think tank working for the last 30 years to counter rising
inequality, low wages and weak benefits for working people, slower
economic growth, unacceptable employment conditions, and a widening
racial wage gap. We intentionally center low- and middle-income
working families in economic policy discussions at the federal, state,
and local levels as we fight for a world where every worker has access
to a good job with fair pay, affordable health care, retirement
security, and a union.

We also know that research on its own is not enough—that’s why we
intentionally pair our research with effective outreach and advocacy
efforts as we fight to make concrete change in everyday people’s
lives.

EPI’S VISION FOR EQUITY, DIVERSITY, AND INCLUSION (EDI). The
Economic Policy Institute’s vision is for all workers to share
equally in the economic prosperity of our country. Our research
exposes the forces that seek to exclude and diminish the power of
people of color and women—particularly Black, Brown, and indigenous
people—to the benefit of white supremacy and wealthy elites. We
recognize the economic legacy of anti-Blackness; slavery;
colonialization; oppressive policies, practices, and institutions; and
the persistence of structural racism, sexism, and xenophobia today.
Therefore, our vision elevates the importance of racial, gender, and
worker justice as central to the world we want to see. 

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