Benga Adjolori

Not massively, but enough to make a measurable difference.

So if there's a lot of corporate bonds being issued, their yields move up higher than a government bond yields might move.

And whether you're borrowing money at five or five and a quarter percent to finance those long run returns, it doesn't have a huge effect.

Coming up.

This is more sustained and it's more, you know, long running.

So one of the things that I've noticed is that the black unemployment rate has always exceeded other groups, and that's never been anything new.

But what's different is that there's a bigger jump, and this is more sustained, and it's more long-running.

Okay, why?

The biggest reason has to do with what's happening with DOGE last year and the loss of employment from the federal workforce.

You know, federal employment has always been the key to the middle class and upper middle class for black households.

And the targeting of the federal workforce has had a measurable impact on black households.

You know, from 2025 to 2024, we saw a nearly full percentage point jump in the black unemployment rate.

And we've seen this across the country, too.

And so that's the biggest thing.

But another part is that the tariff regime actually has also had an impact on black unemployment.

We've seen in one of the larger concentrations of, especially for black men, is the transportation and warehousing industry.

And so there's been a lot of loss of jobs there, manufacturing too.

And so we could tack on the tariff regime on top of the targeting the federal workforce.

So as I mentioned before, Black unemployment is always higher than other groups.

And the other thing is that when there's a loss of jobs and as we head towards a recession, sometimes what we see is that Black unemployment goes first.