Labor
economists
like me mark our calendars for the first
Friday of each
month, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics
releases The
Employment
Situation.
In
February, that report did not arrive on
schedule. According to BLS, a
partial government shutdown temporarily
suspended data processing and
dissemination, delaying the January jobs
report.
Many
economists have built careers around these
numbers, and we are right
to rely on them. But moments like this also
remind us that labor
statistics are produced within institutions
that are meant to be
independent, but are not immune to political
pressure. The
Commissioner of Labor Statistics is
appointed by the president and
confirmed by the Senate to a four-year term.
While the position is
designed to be apolitical, recent
disruptions have underscored how
fragile public trust in economic data can
be.
Still,
we do not need official numbers to know that
many workers -
especially Black workers - are living
through an era of fragile
employment. Federal layoffs, private-sector
retrenchment, reduced
hours, frozen hiring, and stalled mobility
are being felt long before
they are fully captured in headline data.
Recent
job
growth has been weak by historical
standards. Gains have slowed
markedly over the last several months,
reinforcing a sense of
economic brittleness despite political
claims of strength. The
official unemployment rate, 4.4
percent
in December,
appears low - but it does not tell the whole
truth.
It
excludes
discouraged workers who have stopped looking
for jobs. It
excludes people working part time who want
full-time hours. The
Bureau of Labor Statistics’ broader measure
of labor
underutilization - which captures these
realities - stood at 8.4
percent
in December.
Historically,
Black
unemployment runs well above the overall
rate, and that
relationship has been remarkably consistent
across business cycles.
Applying that same pattern to
underutilization yields what I call the
Malveaux
Index:
an estimated Black labor underutilization
rate of approximately
14.3
percent.
This is not
an official statistic, but a way of
amplifying what headline numbers
obscure - that labor market “strength” looks
very different
depending on where one stands.
For
Black workers, this level of
underutilization is recession-level
distress. But no index is required to
recognize what many Black
Americans are already living.
For
generations, Black labor has functioned as
an early warning system
for economic distress. When jobs disappear,
hours are cut, or wages
stall, Black workers experience it first and
most intensely - not
because of individual failings, but because
the structure of the
labor market places them closest to its
fault lines.
Today’s
fragility is not always announced by mass
layoffs. It shows up
quietly: in shortened schedules,
unpredictable shifts, frozen
promotions, and the constant anxiety that
accompanies each paycheck.
A worker can be technically “employed” and
still be economically
insecure. A job can exist without providing
dignity, stability, or a
future.
This
is where official statistics fall short -
and where Black narrative
steps in.
Black
workers are disproportionately concentrated
in retail, hospitality,
caregiving, transportation, logistics, and
public-facing service
work. In these sectors, employers often cut
hours before cutting
jobs. A ten-hour reduction in a workweek
does not register as
unemployment, but it can mean the difference
between rent and
eviction, medication and delay, food and
scarcity.
Data
rarely captures fear. It does not measure
exhaustion. It does not
record the psychic toll of holding onto work
that no longer pays
enough to live, or the humiliation of being
grateful for employment
that offers no path forward.
This
is why Black literature, Black journalism,
and Black cultural
institutions matter so profoundly in this
moment. Long before
economists spoke of “hidden unemployment” or
“labor market
slack,” Black writers documented the truth
of work under constraint
- jobs that damaged bodies, wages that never
caught up, and systems
designed to extract labor without offering
security in return.
From
early twentieth-century narratives of
agricultural labor to
contemporary writing on gig work, care
labor, and economic survival,
Black writers have chronicled labor not as
abstraction but as lived
condition. They have shown how race, class,
gender, and geography
shape who works, who waits, and who is
discarded when conditions
tighten.
A
low unemployment rate does not signal a
healthy labor market if
workers cannot move, cannot bargain, and
cannot survive on what they
earn. A stable job count does not mean
stability if wages lag
inflation and savings have already been
depleted. An economy that
leaves Black workers anxious, immobile, and
overworked is not strong
- it is brittle.
Work
has never been just work for Black
Americans. It is bound up with
dignity, citizenship, survival, and voice.
When the jobs report
misleads - or goes missing altogether - it
is Black work, in all its
forms, that tells the truth.
