National Urban League CEO Marc Morial Talks Workforce for Black Americans

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:07)
Our Bloomberg News team out with a piece this week about how black mothers with young children are leaving the workforce at an alarming pace. Labor force participation, Carol, among black mothers aged 25 to 54 with children under five, it's a really important demographic because 25 to 54 is the prime working age, has fallen 11.5 percentage points in just three months. It's dropped to its lowest level in over 30 years. This is according to analysis of BLS data by Lauren Bauer, an economic studies fellow at the Brookings Institution.

**Carol Massar** (0:36)
Back with us is Marc Morial. He is president and CEO of the Civil Rights and Urban Advocacy Organization, the National Urban League. He joins us from New York. Marc, thank you so much. Nice to have you back on Bloomberg.
We set up, Tim had just mentioned, we were talking about labor force participation among black mothers. The piece continues to note that the decline is not simply part of a broader retreat among working mothers driven by return to office mandates and child care pressures. White and Hispanic mothers have seen much smaller pullbacks. That suggests the reversal is particularly cute among black mothers. It's a group of workers we know who are traditionally more likely to work than their peers. What is going on? Give us your view on this.

**Marc Morial** (1:21)
One thing that's going on is that many of these black women have been laid off from their jobs. The doge cuts, the attacks on diversity in corporate America have cost literally over half a million, maybe three-quarters of a million black women their jobs. These are professional black women in many respects with college degrees and graduate degrees. That impact is exacerbated by the fact that child care is exceedingly expensive and difficult. Mothers, if you do not have a job, you may have to retreat from the workforce and stop looking for work for a period of time. And I think that is what is going on. It is difficult out here. I mean, these numbers, I can say anecdotally, I run into so many black women who have never known unemployment, who are now out of work. And these are hot, excuse me, highly educated, college educated black women. This is what's going on. Look at this jobs report. We've got a loss of jobs. And then we've got a black unemployment rate at 6.3%, where two years ago, it was 4.3%.
So things are deteriorating. It's tough out here. It's difficult.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:36)
Marc, what is notable about this is, this report that we're getting from our Bloomberg News team, this came out yesterday. We get additional data about the workforce today, as we do every single month with the payrolls report.
But last week, or I should say last month, just at the end of last month, you and the team at the National Urban League came out with a stark warning essentially that says the American dream may not be dead for many black Americans, but it's further away than at any point since the civil rights movement. How does the data that Carol and I were talking about fit into what you found big picture about where we are since the civil rights movement?

**Marc Morial** (3:19)
I think it supports the fact that in the last 18 months, we've seen a deterioration and it's been an attack on many of the structures, the Civil Rights Act, the EEOC, the commitment by the government to lead when it comes to diversity. And all of the retreats and all of the retrenchments. And when we talk to people in the community, and this is black people, but I would say even beyond, they say the American dream is beyond my reach. The idea of a stable job that pays and allows me to prepare for retirement. The idea that I can own a home that I can afford, take care of health care, take care of my parents, take care of my children.
We are dealing with what the American people are saying, what black Americans are saying, that the American dream is beyond reach. We have to restore, revive, refine the American dream, which is why our state of black America report includes a five, six point affordability agenda. My premise is that America's priorities are misplaced. The misplacement is that there's this focus on wars, $2 billion a day in Iraq and the depletion of our missile stock, stockpiles.
Fiscal plan, which is all the big ugly bill is called, I call it the big ugly bill, that shifts resources significantly away from middle class Americans, working class Americans, aspiring middle class Americans, and vulnerable Americans to the richest billionaires in America, just 1,000 people. And the American people on the right, the middle and the left are not pleased with the direction of the country and the priorities of the country. So this report speaks to black America, but I think it speaks much more broadly to all of the American people.