In August 2025, the Black unemployment rate surged to 7.5% — about twice the rate for white workers (3.7%) and well above the national average of 4.3%. Washington, D.C., and Michigan had the highest Black unemployment rates in the second quarter of 2025, at 10.3% and 10%, respectively.
These numbers are not mere statistics — they signal families set back, dreams delayed, and communities left more vulnerable each time the economy falters.
For Black Americans, downturns hit harder, and recovery is slower. In these moments, only true wealth infrastructure — assets, homeownership, savings, and entrepreneurship — can anchor families and offer a genuine path forward.
As federal layoffs accelerate and key industries shed workers, families without assets face a familiar crisis: unemployment that threatens not just monthly bills, but housing stability and children’s futures. Black workers bear the heaviest burden, losing jobs first and finding new ones last each time the economy turns.
The promise of the Family Self-Sufficiency Program
One model stands out: the Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program, HUD’s proven approach for helping low-income families turn rental assistance into longterm wealth. As participants’ incomes rise, so do their savings — thanks to an innovative escrow account that captures what otherwise would have gone toward higher rent. By graduation, many families have enough for a down payment, tuition, or even a small business venture. With $141 million in federal appropriations for 2025, FSS is a rare example of scalable, bipartisan anti-poverty policy — yet it faces perennial funding threats that put its gains at risk.
Asset-building programs like FSS, which Congress has protected even as recent budgets have targeted them for cuts, are essential to help families weather unemployment, avoid eviction, and create security that income alone cannot guarantee. In the wake of these disruptions, Black wealth infrastructure isn’t just important; it is essential for community and generational resilience. The effects are visible in lives transformed.
Take Marisabel, who entered the FSS Homeownership Track in Massachusetts as a renter struggling to get ahead. Through steady work, saving, and coaching, she bought her first home — turning uncertainty into lasting security for her family. Likewise, Tanisha Durrett, a single mother, became the proud owner of a bookkeeping business after completing FSS, crediting the program’s financial coaching for her leap into entrepreneurship.
Closing the racial wealth gap
However, even diligent saving can’t close the racial wealth gap alone. The pathways to prosperity increasingly run through new engines of economic growth — like clean energy, a $23 trillion market by 2030, expected to generate over a million jobs in the coming years. Yet Black Americans currently hold only 8% of jobs in the sector and own less than 1% of its companies. Even as industry leaders clamor to hire — “We need to hire 500,000 people in the next decade,” says Jason Grumet of the American Clean Power Association — systemic barriers persist.
Chief among these obstacles is unpaid training. As CEO Carla Walker-Miller notes, “If you want [Black people] to be trained, pay us… We need to be paid while we’re trained.” Without paid opportunities, participation remains limited — no matter how dire the labor shortage. For those who do break in, union positions offer real security: 8–19% higher wages and strong benefits. Most new roles require no college degree, making these jobs especially valuable for displaced workers.
Business ownership — vital for family and community wealth — remains out of reach for many. Fewer than a quarter of Blackowned clean energy companies get bank financing, compared to nearly half of white-owned firms. This persistent financing gap prevents Black entrepreneurs from scaling up and sharing new opportunities.
Programs like FSS, the Dearfield Fund for Black Wealth, and D.C.’s Black Homeownership Fund reveal what’s possible.
These efforts turn passive hope into asset-building action, helping families achieve homeownership, launch businesses, and stabilize entire neighborhoods.
To create lasting resilience, we must do three things:
- Expand asset-building programs like FSS and down payment supports nationwide so every hardworking family can own a home and build security.
- Open pathways to emerging industries with paid training, union jobs, and fair business opportunities.
- Reform lending and homeownership systems with targeted community investments and strict anti-discrimination rules.
If policymakers act with purpose — grounded in evidence — Black families will not only weather economic storms, but thrive: launching businesses, sending children to college, and building communities with enduring strength. True wealth infrastructure is more than a safety net — it’s the foundation for real and lasting mobility. There is no Black mobility without Black sustainability.
Dedrick Asante-Muhammad is the president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Dr. LaToya B. Parker is the senior researcher in the Office of the President at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, where she leads the organization’s Economic Policy and Tax Policy programs.
