Black women also suffered job loss across sectors, said Jessica Fulton, a senior fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank focused on Black Americans. The statistics are only part of the story, though, Fulton noted. Job loss at this scale for Black women has implications for entire families and communities. Black households are less likely to have access to generational wealth or other wealth-building opportunities, she said.

Jessica Fulton, economist and senior fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, joins the show to discuss the November jobs report and rising unemployment for Black people. She also shed light on the interventions needed to improve employment opportunity for us all.

“This recovery really stretched the limits of what policymakers thought was possible for Black workers,” said Jessica Fulton, interim president at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that focuses on issues for people and communities of color. “We were in a situation where folks accepted that Black unemployment was going to always be high and there was nothing that they could do about it. So I think this is an opportunity to continue to push the limits of what’s possible.”