by Jeroslyn JoVonn
February 26, 2025
Black middle class built through federal labor is at risk amid sweeping budget cuts.
For decades, federal employment has provided the Black middle class with stability and a pathway to building wealth. Now, sweeping federal budget cuts threaten this key avenue for economic ascent.
Federal employment has long provided Black Americans with stable, well-paying jobs that help alleviate racial bias and discrimination, while offering pathways for professional and financial growth. With nearly 20% of federal workers identifying as Black, according to an OPM report, many Black federal workers have used government jobs to rise out of poverty and enter the middle class.
However, sweeping cuts under the Trump administration, led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, put this once-reliable path to financial stability at risk.
“The federal workforce was a means to help build Black middle class. It hired Black Americans at a higher rate than private employers,” Sheria Smith, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents the Education Department employees, told NBC News.
As part of his agenda, President Trump is pushing to shut down the Department of Education, a decision that could have widespread consequences nationwide and deeply impact the Black community, who make up nearly 30% of its workforce, according to a 2024 department report.
The federal staff cuts are drastically impacting the Black percentage of the workforce. Of the 74 department workers who have been let go so far, 60 of them were Black, Smith revealed. At the Department of Health and Human Services, where more than 1,300 new hires were reportedly laid off, Black employees made up 20% of the workforce. Similarly, at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which recently lost 1,000 employees, 24% of the staff are Black.
A Department of Transportation employee in Washington, D.C., who requested anonymity out of fear of losing their job, said multiple colleagues have been dismissed under the pretext of “poor performance.”
“Morale is so low,” he said. “People who should be there are gone. Everyone is nervous about the next shoe dropping.”
The anonymous staffer, who has spent 16 years in the job and was planning to retire in four, now fears the cuts may derail those plans.
“I wanted to do an even 20, maybe even 25. But I have to be honest with myself now: I don’t think I’m going to make it,” he said. “Every indicator is that my head will be chopped off sooner or later. How can anyone be productive with that hanging over you?”
Ros Patterson, a 62-year-old benefits department worker at the Veterans Administration in Cole Valley, Illinois, was informed by phone on Jan. 28 that she had been let go after nearly a year on the job. She was given just 90 minutes to return her company laptop. Despite being abruptly terminated, the longtime Trump supporter doesn’t blame the president — only the way her dismissal was handled.
Patterson is “not bitter. It is what it is. I’m not blaming Trump. My thing is how it happened. I had no time to process anything or get myself together. It’s cold the way it was done,” she said. “You’d expect the government to do better.”
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