More Women of Color Are Joining the Workforce Than Ever Before

In today’s chaotic era of deportations and mass shootings, we rarely have good news to report. Today, however, is a new day and we’re excited about this one: more women of color are joining the workforce than ever before! Not only does that mean that more minority women are applying for jobs, but that employers are hiring them as well.

The Washington Post reports that data from the Labor Department is historic for a couple of reasons. For starters, “most new hires of prime working age (25 to 54) are people of color” and “minority hires overtook white hires last year.”

“Minority women began to pour into the labor market in 2015 and they have begun to reshape the demographics of the U.S. workforce, especially because many white baby boomers have been retiring,” the report shows. “There are 5.2 million more people in the United States with jobs than at the end of 2016, and 4.5 million of them are minorities.”

’Job postings containing terms such as “fluent in Spanish” “Spanish required” or “Spanish preferred” have nearly doubled since 2017.’

For the first time ever, most new working-age hires in the US are people of color https://t.co/JkyWD13eiC

— 🔅Sonia W. Soltero🔅 (@soniawsoltero) September 10, 2019

There is one caveat. While this gain is enormous for minority women, it’s still unknown if this group will be able to retain this achievement because the Labor Department reports that “job growth is slowing this year.” Yahoo Finance says that under President Donald Trump’s trade war, the country has lost 300,000 jobs.

The data shows that women who weren’t thinking about going to work are being swayed into various job opportunities. The New York Times also reports that another reason minority women are getting more jobs is that they have the education to back it up.

“While the share of whites and blacks age 18 to 24 who were enrolled in college actually dropped slightly between 2010 and 2016, the share of Hispanic women going for a degree jumped to 41 percent from 36 percent,” according to the Times.

This news is beyond promising, it’s incredible, and we must continue to work hard to keep this number rising. There’s a possible recession looming, and we have no idea who will take the biggest hit. We don’t want to be downers because it could be minority women. According to the Times, white men are still the top earners.

Progress made, but leadership and the C-Suite still lags behind. We MUST act to ensure diversity does more than just trickle up! #DiversityMattershttps://t.co/5ZhluGrgRo

— Rep. Joyce Beatty (@RepBeatty) September 10, 2019

“We have an issue with wage inequality, income inequality and wealth inequality where most of the growth is going to the top,” Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy, said in an interview with the Times. “Those people are less likely to be women, and much less likely to be women of color.”