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.
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.
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.
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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Source: Black Enterprise
